Michelle Garza: DACC

I always knew I would go to college.

It wasn’t a question—it was a given. In my family, education was the expectation, the foundation that held everything together. Traditional degrees, advanced learning, academic milestones—these were the steps you took, and I followed them without hesitation.

But then life, in all its unpredictability, stepped in.

At 20, I had my first child. Suddenly, the steady path I’d been walking cracked open. What was once straightforward became uncertain. My timeline shifted. My priorities changed. But I didn’t give up. I worked through the chaos, earned my bachelor’s degree, then my master’s. I even started a PhD, but I didn’t finish it—not because I lacked the ability or the drive, but because life needed something different from me at that time.

Those experiences gave me something no textbook could: a deep, personal understanding of how complicated and non-linear educational journeys can be. I lived it. So when adult learners come to me—sometimes after years away from school, juggling families, jobs, responsibilities—I don’t just understand. I relate. I empathize.

For several years, I worked in extension education, designing learning experiences for people who often sat outside the boundaries of traditional classrooms. There, I began to truly understand how people learn—not just from lectures or textbooks, but from life, from connection, from relevance. I saw how traditional teaching methods often left people behind. And I learned how to reach them anyway.

When that role ended, I stumbled upon a job posting for an Adult Education Instructor at DACC. Something about it clicked. I knew I could bring all that I had lived and learned into this space. I knew what it was like to feel behind, to feel like you’ve missed a step—and I wanted to be the kind of instructor who helped people find their way forward again.

I walked into my first ESL class terrified. I had no idea what I was doing. I fumbled, guessed, adapted and I even cried. But I kept showing up. I created a space where learning didn’t have to look perfect—it just had to feel “possible”.

At the end of that first term, a student thanked me. She said, “Because of your class, I did a job interview. In English.” That one sentence was everything. It reminded me that education doesn’t have to be grand or linear to be powerful. It can be quiet. Personal. Life-changing—one person at a time.

Since then, I’ve committed myself to this work—not only teaching adult students but also supporting other educators. I’ve had the privilege of helping create professional development for adult education instructors, guiding them to find their own voice, their own tools, their own way of reaching people who learn differently.

Now, I not only get to teach at DACC—I get to help teachers become the best version of themselves. And every day, I carry with me the belief that learning doesn’t always follow a straight line. Life gets in the way. But that doesn’t mean it ends the journey.

It just means we walk it differently. And sometimes, that difference is where the real learning begins.