Jada Cobos' students have noticed something about their new math teacher: She is always happy to see them. They've even asked her why.

"I tell them, 'This is my dream,'" Jada said. "When you love what you do, you don't feel like you're working."

Long before Jada had a classroom of her own, school was a place she needed. She grew up in California and remembers a difficult home life, but at school she found a safe place with two teachers who cared for her: her elementary math teacher, Mr. Wright, and her high school drama teacher, Mrs. Carter

"They both went out of their way for me," she said. "Coming from not the best home life, I came to school to escape, and those teachers always made it such a safe space." 

What they may not have realized was how much their care would shape the student in front of them.

"To have someone care about you outside of who should care about you stood out to me," Jada said. "I knew I wanted to be that for somebody else."

Becoming that teacher would take longer than she expected. Her journey through college stretched across 10 years, much of it navigated on her own, and there were times when the finish line seemed far away.

"If you had told me at the beginning that it was going to take me 10 years to get this degree, I would've said, 'I'm not doing it,'" she said. "But the person I am now knows those 10 years were going to pass anyway."

Jada knows what it's like to wonder whether something is simply too difficult. She is dyslexic, something she now talks about openly with students who aren't sure what they're capable of.

"I take pride in my story because there's a kid out there with a story similar to mine who may not think they can achieve something," she said. "I'm dyslexic, and I'm a math teacher. You can quite literally be anything in this world."

Last year, Jada's journey brought her to Atlanta Middle School through A&M Texarkana's teacher residency program. She knew math, but she wasn't convinced that meant she could teach it.

"I was scared," she said. "I kept thinking, 'I know math, but can I teach it? What if they don't learn from me?'"

At first, standing in front of students didn't feel natural. Jada said it almost felt like she was acting, playing the part of a teacher rather than believing she was one. That began to change as she heard students repeating things she had taught them and watched concepts begin to click.

"I remember thinking, 'Oh, this is amazing,'" she said. “I love it so much.”

Her mentor teacher, Katie Smith, helped Jada make that transition, not by prescribing the kind of teacher she should become, but by giving her room to discover it for herself.

"She didn't tell me the teacher I had to be," Jada said. "She let me figure out the teacher I wanted to be."

Smith encouraged her to trust herself, manage her classroom and understand that she didn't have to become someone else to be a good teacher.

"She showed me I could be myself," Jada said. "She set me up to not be afraid."

By the time her residency was ending, Jada knew she wasn't ready to leave Atlanta. Returning meant making another sacrifice. She still had a semester of higher-level math courses to complete, so she worked with her professor to move those classes online while beginning her first year as a full-time teacher.

"It was worth the fight to be able to teach here again," she said.

Now Jada has a classroom of her own, although that's not how she talks about it with her students.

"This is our classroom," she tells them.

Math is only part of what she hopes they learn there. Her classroom has one overriding expectation: be kind. Students aren't allowed to tear one another down, and when they hurt someone, they're expected to make it right. Jada has already heard that lesson following students into hallways and other classrooms.

"I'm planting these little seeds and getting to watch them grow into good people," she said. "I want them to take the things I am teaching with them. Maybe they want to be educators. Teach it to their students. Maybe they want to be parents. Teach it to their kids. Maybe they just want to be better people. Take it in, teach it to their friends. I want to send good people out into the world."

At the same time, Jada knows her first group of students will help shape the teacher she becomes.

"These are my first-year kids," she said. "They matter so much to me. Whatever educator I become, I'm going to learn from this year because of them. I want them to remember a kind teacher who loved what she was doing and loved them."

There is a significance to standing in her own classroom that her students may not fully understand. For years, Jada kept working toward a place that sometimes seemed far away. Now, after a decade of trying, she made it.

"It's still a dream to me," Jada said. "I still can't grasp that I'm in the middle of it, and I am thankful that it’s been amazing."

Even now, the accomplishment can be difficult for her to put into words.

"I did it," she said. "I did it."

And the lesson she learned along the way has become one of the lessons she now gives her students.

"You can do hard things," Jada said. "If it's hard, it's OK. You can do hard things."