Miami is such an idyllic place that most students never want to leave. So when education major Mamie Hobbs decided to spend a semester living and teaching in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, some people didn’t understand. Why the move? Why not commute from fun, charming Oxford?

But Mamie knew that participating in Miami’s Urban Teaching Cohort was important — for her own education and for her future students. For an entire semester, Mamie lived (along with ten other Miami students) in an apartment in Over-the-Rhine. There, as a student-teacher, she lived in the same neighborhood as her students and learned first-hand about the challenges their community faced.

Mamie says that her Over-the-Rhine experience taught her that good teaching requires you to earn your students’ trust. That trust is the foundation for helping any student learn. Now, her goal is to spend her career teaching in an urban environment, helping underprivileged students trust her and, most importantly, believe in themselves.