What Williams wanted in her classroom was diversity. That is a controversial notion in public education these days, when the federal government is threatening to withhold funds from school systems and colleges that make it a priority. But Williams’s desire wasn’t a political matter. To her, it simply made practical sense. Whether they were rich or poor, her students were going to grow up in a country defined by its diversity, and she didn’t want to teach them in an environment marked by its absence.
So in the spring of 2023, Williams applied for a job at another Dallas Independent School District campus, the experimental Solar Preparatory School for Girls. By design, half of Solar Prep’s students come from families who are economically disadvantaged and half from households with higher incomes. The wealthier group includes plenty of middle-class kids but also many girls whose parents could afford one of Dallas’s tonier private schools but choose instead to send their daughters to Solar Prep.
I met Williams on a warm morning at a community event in the Oak Cliff section of South Dallas. She was wearing a purple Solar Prep T-shirt and standing behind a table that the school’s PTA had set up to recruit prospective students. When we spoke, her enthusiasm came out in a joyful rush. “The inspiration that I experience every day through my girls is something that I wish every teacher in the United States could experience,” she told me. “It’s literally love overflowing.”