This work is inspired by former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s initial campaign launch when he channeled Dickens’ famous work to illustrate a “Tale of Two Cities”—NYC as a place where the desires of the powerful elite eclipsed the pressing needs of the people. There is also a tale of two schools: those where people would send their own child, and those where they would not. At one end of the spectrum are the choice schools, located in wealthier neighborhoods where only residents can attend, or privileged children can test or screen into. These are the schools my own children attended. At the other end are the unscreened community schools in the poorer neighborhoods, where children in the area are zoned to attend if they cannot get into another school of their choice. These are the schools in which I taught. There is a deep division between schools we would want to send our children, and schools we would not. As a visionary white education professor fighting to close the equity gap in urban schools, the trauma of being powerless at preventing the spirit murder of our most vulnerable students was too much to bear during my years as a high school teacher. By ascending into the ranks of academia, I can reach exponentially more students by providing their teachers with the necessary tools to utilize writing to liberate themselves and the adolescents they teach.