On August 6th, 2024, I had a solid draft of a 260-page dissertation in my hands. That whole week, I pored through so many of the words, I might have gone cross-eyed. Between the 100 or so survey responses and over 20 interviews, I knew I was onto something, but this draft felt like something wholly different. At noon, it was finally time to turn over this draft to my committee. I reviewed the e-mail with the attachment about five times.

But after all these years of putting my hands down in the work, I hit “Send” and put my hands up. As they say, I let go and let God.

The doctoral journey was a spiritual journey. All my friends would ask me how it’s going, and I’d nonchalantly flip: “I can read, I can write, and I can do math, so not bad.” The academic exercises didn’t feel difficult per se. I spent about two months listening to teachers and trying to make meaning of their experiences. What stood out the most from the interviews wasn’t what they said, at least on the surface. I understood how they interwove the pedagogical, the personal, and the political layers of their answers.

But this felt different. From what I surmised in the interviews, these educators with a wide range of years and experiences in the field had experienced something new in our hour-long sessions: uninterrupted listening. In many cases, they’d remark “Wow, that’s the first time someone asked me this.”

By the time I got to interview 25, I realized that my interview protocol was a series of questions I wished someone would have asked me. But I disassociated just long enough so their voices could take center stage. After dropping off my son, I’d walk into desolate rooms just before the sun fully rose, turned on the lights, coffee just warm enough to hold me over. Some opportunities fell through. Bills rose. Mental and physical challenges came, went, and returned. I haven’t been this humbled since I graduated from Syracuse University 20 years ago.

My wife and son supported me and pushed me to go write. Carry on, I did.

Because this jewel box was both some of my best work and a piece of the larger work I’ve set out to do with whatever time I have. These perspectives needed to get out into the world. My people had something to say about the teaching profession and the urgency couldn’t be clearer. I didn’t see myself as some wise master from afar, but a worker clearing the paths for others behind and next to me. I’d ask questions of my transcripts and the words talked back to me as if it was the participants themselves. I poked around numbers seeking both surprises and confirmations.

My first graduation from Teachers College, Columbia University happened in May of 2024 at United Palace about a mile away from where I first taught. By then, I was hoping to just have a good first draft. What I got was a deeper sense or spirituality.

All that deep listening, reading, and meaning-making was God talking to me. My intuition said “This is how it’s gonna go, but it’s gonna get done.” The process was as tedious as the drafting was, but I had a date and time: August 20th, 2024 at 1pm ET. Ten minutes before I was scheduled to defend, I wasn’t sure why the college felt so quiet. Soon, my people appeared and it felt just like it was supposed to. The two hour hearing ended with me whispering “Thank you” to the unknowable while other people mingled.

Then, the college got quiet again. God only knows why, though.

It’s worth saying a bunch of other stuff happened this year, too. EduColor held its fifth annual virtual summit featuring Nikole Hannah-Jones and some of the best educators I know from across the country. I keynoted and spoke on panels from the East to the West coast. A team of us co-planned and executed a creative and energetic two-week education activism and teacher learning institute at Teachers’ College, too. I signed my second book contract for this beautiful math book I can’t wait for the world to read. That Edutopia interview is still making its rounds across different districts. The White House invited dozens of prominent Afro-Latinx folks from across the country for a first-ever gathering of its kind. (I met Gina Torres; I’m never going to fail.) I rode a train right back so I could make my family breakfast the next morning.

Oh, and my son performed on multiple stages in the city. He rocked.

The New York Liberty won a chip (which means a lot to real New York basketball fans, truly). The city’s vibes were immaculate, as they say. But by the time former President Trump was named President-elect Trump again, my head didn’t stop shaking in disapproval for about a week. I saw how easy it was to splinter communities through well prepared narratives. The evidence kept pointing to the fact that this was a likely outcome, including the testimonies from so many teachers I heard. Our collective education wasn’t doing us any favors. The prescience of connecting the dots between several disinvestments in citizenship speaks to how easily this country has slipped into fascism and oligarchy.

But even then, about a week after the results, I saw people snap out of it and collect their people.

A small and powerful set of people are counting on us to be fearful. My doctoral process was teaching me a newfound courage, for the knowledge that I would unearth could help us imagine a world after the one we’re in. While people search for the meaning of life, I’ve found its meaning through this work for me and mine. In this next spiritual level, the darkness around us doesn’t dictate the world we imagine. Furthermore, I couldn’t be good at anything or for anyone if I didn’t love myself in the midst of this.

I’ve been seeking this clarity my whole life. For you and I. For us. Always.

Thank you, 2024. Let’s get this, 2025.