Picture this: Michael Faggella-Luby, a first-year ACE teacher juggling the multiple demands of teaching high school chemistry and English, opens the door to his ninth grade English class. There, among the crowd of students, is Thomas—a tall and wiry freshman brimming with energy. Unlike his classmates, who are seated in the rows of desks, Thomas—shoeless and shirt tails untucked—has shimmied up the support pole of the classroom. Michael’s gaze follows the pole upwards, to meet Thomas’s confident grin: “Hi, Mr. F!” Michael’s immediate reaction: a silent thought to himself, “There’s a lot going on here.” Those who know Michael now might be struck by the prescience of that silent observation. After all, Michael’s adventures with Thomas in the late 1990s in Jacksonville, Florida, formed the seeds of what has become Michael’s life-long career as a scholar of Special Education.