Darrin Flowers ’07, 7th and 8th-grade teacher at the University of Detroit Jesuit, discusses with us the importance of creating relationships with students outside of subjects in the curriculum. Darrin felt called to become a teacher during his time substitute teaching where he saw the lack of black male figures in all the schools he went to. He shares how diverse students’ backgrounds can be and how much their life outside of the classroom affects their learning and, therefore, how he chooses to teach them.