Felicia Phillips:  

he local phone company serving the Southeast US. I stayed at BellSouth for 14 years. I enjoyed all of the jobs I had at BellSouth, but my most favorite and most memorable was working for 4 years on projects related to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. I helped to design the telecommunications network, which transported results from the competition sites to the broadcasters, newspapers, and athletes' villages. It's amazing that it takes 4 years and thousands of staff and volunteers to put on an event that only lasted 17 days! I also developed expertise in marketing, sales, operations, training, and product development. I got to travel a bit to other cities in the South, and met some really wonderful people during my tenure at BellSouth. My first teaching job was in the Boston Public Schools. Boston is trying to close the "achievement gap", or the vast difference in test scores and dropout rates between low-income, mostly minority students and middle-class students. I tried to do my part, but a teacher's job is very challenging. I learned something new about myself and my students every day; there's definitely joy and pain in this work! Now I teach in the Atlanta Public Schools, and the challenges I experienced in Boston are very similar. Many students are unmotivated and underperforming, but we as teachers have to bring out the very best in them. And I am determined to help them succeed!!