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Dr. Markii’s Story
I went to ten schools in twelve years — across countries, languages, and systems that never quite knew what to do with me.
Private, public, Christian, Jewish. Tiny classrooms and massive auditoriums.
I had undiagnosed ADHD and honestly didn’t care much about school. I was smart enough to get by without effort — no homework, no backpack, and every year I refused the textbooks because I didn’t want to carry them.
By senior year, I had more absences than days in class. Teachers told me I might not graduate. Some brushed me off. But one strict English teacher didn’t. She held me to a higher standard — and for the first time in my life, I rose to meet it.
When I first arrived in the U.S., the school didn’t know what to do with a student who didn’t speak English. So they gave me the exact same schedule as a French boy and told me to copy everything he did — same classes, same homework, even the same tests. I learned early that systems often care more about their ratings than their students.
Still, I made it to college — first to the University of Miami, then to Spain for my master’s, followed by Harvard and UCLA, and eventually my doctorate.
Later, while working in the children’s courthouse, I saw a painful pattern repeat itself: bright kids dismissed, underestimated, or written off. Many of them didn’t even know that in Florida, foster youth qualify for free college until age 26.
That discovery changed everything.
When my first foster student started community college, it felt like victory. When the first enrolled in a four-year university, it was transformation. And when one got into Yale — that’s when I knew this was bigger than one counselor or one school.
That’s when Dream Education Consulting was born.
