Her Story
About La
I've been a K-12 educator for 32 years, and I currently work at the central office level. Throughout my career, I've worn many hats - I was a middle school teacher where I created a female mentoring program, I worked at Howard University mentoring college students in the TRIO program who were the first in their families to go to college, and I recruited teachers for my home school district for 7 years. I have over 17 licensures because in education, you have to keep up on your certifications - even though I'm at central office now, if anything happens, I can go back into a classroom. In March 2024, while going back to school for my doctorate, I founded Slam Dunk Enterprises to help people navigate student loan debt. This work is deeply personal to me because I've been through everything imaginable - default, wage garnishment, struggling to secure properties at good interest rates. I had to examine my own relationship with money and debt. Now I'm paying cash for my continued education and helping others create a playbook for managing their debt. I'm developing a comprehensive financial literacy curriculum that I hope to test and launch by June, and my dream is to do TED talks and work with teachers at conferences. I'm also a published author - I wrote a chapter about my journey battling obesity and inspiring others to be healthy. As I approach retirement in about 7 years, I want to mentor college students, bring them into my company in the fall, and learn from them about social media and AI while we explore how new technology will impact financial decision-making.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with La
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If you're not ready to have fun with children and the learning process, please do us all a favor and don't do it. I recruited for 7 years for my home school district, and when we asked candidates why they wanted to teach, if they said 'I love children, and I get the summers off,' we would not hire them. If I don't walk in a classroom and see you actually having fun teaching children, then that's gonna be a long career. I love teaching. I love to see their bright eyes open up, because they were like, oh, I never thought of that! Yeah, that's cool! Or, well, what about this? Because eventually, you don't want to be the one leading the class. You want to be the facilitator, and you want them to lead their learning process. So if you're not ready to have fun with teaching children, do not come into education. You gotta have fun, with all costs, you got to have fun.
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