A Personal Statement

Good afternoon, Harvard Graduate School of Education Class of 2025.

Can we take a moment of silence for all the lives lost and lives gained on this ride we have been on these past 10 months? Thank you.

Congratulations to everyone who has made it to this day — whether you glided here or crawled. I would be remiss not to acknowledge that this has been a really tough time for many of us. And to know that we are in a space together today, to celebrate, to exhale, and to witness each other — it’s a gracious moment that deserves nothing but jubilation.

Good afternoon, Dean Lesaux, faculty, staff, families, and my fellow graduates — the Class of 2025:

When we applied to HGSE, each of us wrote a personal statement — a story about who we were, what we believed in, and what brought us to the edge of this opportunity.

Mine began with a deep belief that education was more than a pathway out — it was a way back. Back to community. Back to purpose. Back to self. I wrote about growing up without generational wealth, but with generational wisdom. I dreamed of Harvard not as a destination, but as a doorway — to build a future where students who look like me don’t just survive the system, they redefine it.

I was thinking about students who are brilliant but silenced — the ones who don’t have access, the ones who don’t have freedom to express, the ones who are never handed the mic to speak on the changes they want to see in the world. I wanted to be a conduit — a voice for the voiceless, an advocate for those who’ve been pushed to the margins.

A few months before I applied to HGSE, I found out that my grandfather wrote his own personal statement — not in an essay, but in action. He was one of 13 plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case Griggs v. Duke Power Co. — a case that didn’t just challenge a company, but exposed a system. In the 1950s, Duke Power’s Dan River Steam Station in North Carolina restricted Black employees to its “Labor” department, where the highest-paying job earned less than the lowest-paying position in the other departments. Then in 1955, they added a requirement: a high school diploma — which most Black workers had been systematically denied. On July 2, 1965, the day the Civil Rights Act of 1964 took effect, they added two tests: the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test and the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test. These so-called “objective” measures made white applicants nearly ten times more likely to qualify for advancement than Black ones. My grandfather and others pushed back — and the Supreme Court agreed. They ruled that “acts generally lawful may become unlawful when done to accomplish an unlawful end.” Griggs established the legal precedent of disparate impact, a doctrine that still shapes employment law today.

That discovery lit up my world. It made my purpose undeniable. It clarified why advocating for an inclusive, accessible education system is not just my passion — it’s my inheritance.

It reminded me that the fight for justice runs through my bloodline. That my presence in this space was not accidental, but ancestral. And it deepened my drive to use education as a lever for systemic transformation, not just incremental change.

When I learned that, something in me locked in. The fight for justice was no longer abstract. I realized: education is one of the last standing fields where advocacy, policy, and personal transformation still collide. This is my lane. This is my fight. I’ve been chosen to represent, and I do so with pride, with pressure, and with purpose.

I remember sitting in front of my laptop, staring at that blinking cursor, wondering if my story — my truth — was enough. I wrote that statement with hope, yes, but also with fire. I wanted to find a place where my questions weren’t too loud, where my ambition wasn’t too big, where my love for my people wasn’t seen as political, but necessary

But that fire didn’t start with HGSE. It’s been burning. The difference now? It’s been fueled — fanned into something brighter by being surrounded by greatness. Because iron sharpens iron. And this year, I’ve been sharpened by peers who forged critical theory into pedagogical poetry, who brought brilliance to every breakout room, who held me accountable and lifted me higher. That flame now burns fiercely with the weight of responsibility and the glow of vision.

And I wasn’t alone. 

“I wrote my personal statement at 2 a.m. on the floor of my apartment, crying,” one of you shared with me. “Because I was tired of being told that the way I loved kids, the way I taught, wasn’t ‘academic enough.’”

Another classmate said, “I wrote about my grandmother. She couldn’t read or write, but she taught me everything I needed to know about resilience. I applied to HGSE for her.”

Some of us wrote about leaving jobs, crossing borders, surviving pandemics and grief, navigating systems that weren’t built for us — and still showing up. Still believing that education can be liberation.

And then we got here. To Harvard.

Where, let’s be honest, sometimes it felt like we were trying to squeeze our full, complicated lives into 500-word Canvas posts. Where imposter syndrome wasn’t a theory — it was a regular Tuesday.

But also — where we met each other.

Where we sat in circles and named our fears. Where we unlearned and relearned. And through it all, we were challenged — deeply — by the academic rigor this place demanded. In our core courses, we rooted ourselves in the science of how people learn, paired with the framework of Universal Design for Learning, to create practices that could reach the masses — young and old. Those foundational classes we took in August laid the groundwork for leading change through an evidence-based lens. They gave us not just content, but context — a sharper understanding of how theory fuels transformation. The perspectives and skills we gained weren’t abstract — they were tools. Tools we now carry forward to dismantle inequity and design for belonging.

Where we dreamed together, fought together, laughed way too hard in Gutman, and held each other when it got heavy.

But our HGSE experience was never confined to classrooms. It was in the late-night conversations in dorm lounges and campus hallways. It was in the stadium seats of Fenway, the museums of Seaport, and the cabin get-aways in Lenox — where theory met testimony, where policy met people.

It was being shaped by professors who dared us to reimagine and peers who challenged us to go deeper. It was walking through Harvard Yard with the weight of history on our backs and the future in our hands.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, during a course at HGSE, I saw an image of Lewis Latimer — a name I hadn’t heard nearly enough growing up. Born right here in Massachusetts, Latimer is most remembered for creating the carbon filament that made Thomas Edison’s light bulb practical and long-lasting. Without his innovation, the light as we know it would not glow today.

I carried that image with me — not just as a Black man in STEM history, but as a symbol. Because HGSE may have provided the framework, the bulb — but we, the students, are the carbon filament. We are the illumination. And just like Latimer made light sustainable, we can make knowledge transformative.

The spark within us was already there — HGSE didn’t give us that — but what this place did do was connect us to an electric current of ideas, people, and purpose, powerful enough to invoke the next great phenomenon. May we each become our own light bulb — not just conductors of brilliance, but catalysts of change — grounded in truth, charged with vision, and divinely positioned to illuminate a new path forward, in whatever form that may take.

This is where our personal statements became a collective story.

A story of future school leaders, policy changers, curriculum designers, youth organizers, data reimaginers — who don’t just want to “close gaps,” but open doors. Who don’t just want to fix education, but transform the systems that uphold the status quo.

Because we are not just a part of the education system. We are part of a larger movement — one that challenges what is possible in a world that too often tells us to settle for what is.

And now, we leave this place in a moment of uncertainty — in a world where books are being banned faster than they're being read, where diversity is being politicized, and where educators are being told to stay in their lane, to teach neutrality when our communities need truth.

The legacy of that case — of my grandfather’s fight — is not just history. It is prophecy. Because today, we are seeing the same tactics return, dressed in new clothes: policies that seem neutral but disproportionately punish the marginalized. Tests of worthiness. Standards not designed for equity, but exclusion.

It has been two months since Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist at Columbia University, was detained in an immigration facility in Louisiana. He wrote a letter welcoming his newborn son. In it, he asked: “Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?”

That question does not just haunt. It exposes. It reminds us that the violence we fight is embedded in the systems that surround us — systems designed to surveil, to silence, to discipline anyone who dares to speak truths institutions would rather suppress.

We must fight for a future where no one is forced to write their joy through the bars of a cell. Where no one’s divine moments are denied by design. That letter wasn’t just for his son. It was for all of us. And our task now is not just to remember it — but to respond.

There’s an overreach — not just of government, but of fear. And in moments like this, the question becomes: will we fold, or will we rise?

I say we rise.

Because we didn’t come to HGSE to blend in. We came to learn to change the world. And sometimes, that change starts by reminding folks: Don’t Underestimate My Brain. That’s D.U.M.B. — a little play on words, but a big reminder: We are not just thinkers, we are builders. Innovators. Disruptors. Dreamers with degrees.

We know that education is not neutral. It is political. It is personal. And it is powerful.

This story includes the friend who helped you with your stats homework, the one who said “You got this” before your cohort presentation, the one who invited you over when you didn’t want to eat alone.

Because yes, Harvard gave us classes. But we gave each other community.

And that’s what I want to leave us with today — a charge, but also a truth:

Our stories are not finished. The personal statement was the beginning — not the whole book. From here, we keep writing. Not just for ourselves, but for the students, the families, the movements waiting on our pages. So let’s tell better stories — louder, prouder, and more honest. Let’s write chapters filled with joy, with justice, with imagination — and let’s write them together.

Congratulations, Class of 2025. We are the authors now.