The Work Is Already Done
February 06, 2026
By B.A.D. TCHR
Before sunrise, the gym is already alive. Basketballs thud against the hardwood. Music runs low. Laughter cuts through the air. At The Quest Center, Christopher Townley moves from student to student, watching posture settle, timing align, and balance hold. In Hollywood, Fla., he adjusts drills on the fly, not to the room but to the students in front of him.
Nothing here is happening by accident.
For Townley, the gym is where progress shows up, sometimes barely visible, sometimes undeniable.
“My wife profoundly influenced my journey into special education,” Townley said. “She’s an exceptional ESE teacher, autism coach, and ESE specialist. Watching how she connected with her students made me rethink my career.”
Townley came to education late and sideways. His training was in public budgeting and finance, a world built on distance and abstraction. That framework collapsed when he saw what proximity demanded: students whose needs required patience, repetition, and presence, not policy language.
“It was her passion for students with complex disabilities that resonated with me,” he said. “That’s what set me on this path.”
He entered the classroom at Olsen Middle School as a teacher assistant while earning state certification, then moved on to lead an SVE classroom. The work was direct and unfiltered. Students faced learning and mobility challenges that shaped each hour.
“That experience proved transformative,” he said. “It reinforced my commitment to this population.”
Sports had always been constant. Adapted athletics became the translation point. Coaching Special Olympics and flag football, Townley saw movement do what classrooms could not: create access without negotiation.
“Adapted physical education opens doors,” he said. “It gives students a place to succeed.”
After several summers teaching extended school-year programs at The Quest Center, Townley took a full-time Adapted PE position. The change was immediate.
“I remember my first days clearly,” he said. “I was exhilarated and overwhelmed. The perseverance of these students was immediate.”
Working across a wide range of abilities recalibrated what success meant. Progress stopped being cumulative and became specific.
The drills repeat until the body understands what the mind cannot yet name.
“Every achievement matters,” Townley said. “Some days, growth comes in leaps. Other days it’s a step. But it counts.”
The work is supported by families who understand its stakes, particularly those connected to Special Olympics. Their consistency creates continuity for students who depend on it.
Some moments remain fixed. One goes back to Olsen Middle School, when Townley worked with a student with cerebral palsy who struggled to walk.
“Through consistent effort, he made remarkable progress,” Townley said. “By our second year together, he was running confidently and became the lead runner on our 4x100 relay team.”
The team won gold at the state competition at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports. The result mattered less than the progress.
“It reinforced something I carry every day,” Townley said. “Never set limits on a student’s potential.”
Other moments register quietly. During a parachute activity, a student with profound physical disabilities, usually withdrawn, began laughing.
“That moment reminded me there’s always a way to reach someone,” Townley said. “It takes patience, creativity, and consistency.”
The work carries weight. Many of Townley’s students are medically fragile. Loss is part of it.
“There are times I work with a student on a Friday and learn after the weekend that they’ve passed,” he said. “It never gets easier.”
Still, he returns.
“Even in grief, the other students need me present,” he said. “They depend on that stability.”
If Townley offers one message beyond campus walls, it is this: diagnosis is not definition.
“Their value isn’t diminished by the support they require,” he said. “With guidance and encouragement, they can live full lives.”
As a specialized center within Broward County Public Schools, The Quest Center serves students whose needs exceed those met by traditional classrooms. It brings together educators, therapists, families, and adaptive programs.
Back in the gym, the day is still young. Basketballs keep their beat. Townley watches a student reset their stance, waits, then nods. Another rep. Another try. No ovation. No scoreboard. Just bodies learning what they can do, and a teacher refusing to rush the proof.
The work is already done, and no one here is waiting for permission to prove it matters.
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When Trust Comes First
February 06, 2026
By B.A.D. TCHR
Students step through the doors of Phoenix Academy of Excellence in Miami Gardens, Fla., with skepticism. For many, school is a place that has already shut them out, or one they have learned to shut themselves out of. They arrive guarded, mistrust visible in posture and tone. Some have been suspended so often that classroom norms feel unfamiliar, boundaries are distorted, and disrespect must be unlearned before respect can take root. Others are multiple grade levels behind, and each year their futures are shaped by someone else’s low expectations, sometimes even their own.
Before lessons or test scores, LaToya Tucker-Robinson confronts that mistrust directly. Drawing on years in alternative education and a honed intuition, she begins with trust, laying a foundation sturdy enough for possibility to take hold.
“Before you can educate them,” Tucker-Robinson said, “you have to undo what they believe about school and about themselves.”
At Phoenix, she said, the work must be intentional. Acts of insubordination, absences, and learning gaps are not treated as proof of inevitable failure. They are signals that demand steady expectations. Those expectations serve as scaffolding through clear rules, consistent consequences, and visible follow-through, making care and responsibility inseparable.
Tucker-Robinson does not look away from the world Phoenix students inhabit, a reality rarely acknowledged in policy debates that label children as misfits without naming the conditions that shape them. Instead, she names the forces that make schools like Phoenix necessary.
For many students, and in some cases most, cyclical chaos forms the backdrop of daily life: family conflict that never cools, aggression passed from one generation to the next, and the weight of economic strain.
“They’re living without a real support system,” she said. “What looks chaotic to outsiders is normal to them.”
Those realities shape Phoenix’s daily work. The school functions as a classroom and a stabilizing force, a place where discipline and structure coexist, not to excuse behavior, but to see the child behind it, still hoping to be seen.
Expectations are easy to declare and far harder to sustain. The emotional labor required to maintain them is often overlooked.
For Tucker-Robinson and her staff, upholding standards demands patience, consistency, and endurance. Teachers confront academic gaps while navigating distrust, trauma, and disengagement. Progress is broken into steps that students can realistically reach.
“We build the steps,” Tucker-Robinson said.
Phoenix is not a fit for every teacher, no matter how polished the résumé. On paper, experience can impress. In practice, classroom management determines who stays.
“Educators struggle when they lack classroom management, resist consistency, or fail to center students,” Tucker-Robinson said. “Those who see children as obstacles rather than responsibilities do not last.”
Traditional measures often miss what matters most at Phoenix. Report cards and test scores rarely capture the quiet, hard-won progress students achieve.
When a student begins at the lowest level in reading or mathematics and makes even modest gains, that progress is recognized. Growth, regardless of scale, matters.
“We don’t allow our students to fail,” Tucker-Robinson said. “Failure is not an option.”
Some decisions test the limits of leadership. For Tucker-Robinson, the most difficult are often the most counterintuitive: releasing students who need Phoenix but whose actions threaten its vision.
“They were sowing seeds that could undo everything we were creating,” she said. “We’ve come too far to let a few students destroy it.”
The cost is personal. Removing a student runs against the purpose of a place like Phoenix. Yet at times, the survival of the broader community depends on that choice.
Tucker-Robinson is held accountable for outcomes shaped by years of instability that precede students’ arrival. She and her teachers are evaluated on attendance patterns, behavioral data, test scores, and graduation timelines that extend beyond a single academic year.
“Every student wants to learn, whether they admit it or not,” she said. “Their success drives me.”
Standing at the center of that work, Tucker-Robinson rebuilds trust where it has been broken, offers structure where there was confusion, and holds firm to the conviction that every student, especially those written off elsewhere, can still move forward.
“Without Phoenix, many of our students would fall through the cracks, and the system would move others into settings with fewer supports,” she said. “But accountability matters here. We meet students halfway. The system hasn’t kept pace with their needs, but students still have to buy in. When they do, we stand in that gap with them.”
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