Every year, students are asked to write themselves into being — to explain who they are and how they got here. It’s a tall order, especially when you’re seventeen and the world keeps shifting under your feet. So I decided to do the assignment too. What follows is the essay I’d submit if I had to apply for the job of teaching your kid. It’s the story of how I became the kind of teacher who believes a single moment can change everything.

Kids don’t struggle because they’re not smart; they struggle because school demands more executive function than we tend to teach. EF is the system that helps students plan, focus, remember instructions, and adapt when things get hard. And the good news? It’s trainable.