Ayanna Bass is not your typical RIC senior: she's a 39-year-old single mother of a child with ADHD, a mcnairatric scholar, a research intern for equity_inst, and a member of the Educators of Color Committee for ridepted. • As a nontraditional student she has had to balance her education and other responsibilities – and that experience has inspired her to affect change for others facing similar hurdles. "They tell you right away that in order to student teach for a year you'll have to quit your job," she says. "As a single mom, I couldn't quit my job." • What Bass did do is step down from a management position to take on a lower-paying position with flexible hours and request from RIC an alternative student teaching placement. The YMCA afterschool program, where children typically have IEP plans or were multilingual learners, became her alternate placement, and for three days a week she also worked in a collaborative classroom. • "My experience as a nontraditional student in a tradition...