When Paige, the campus leader at Alpha Brownsville, walked into the staff kitchen one spring afternoon and casually asked, “Anyone want to go to Malawi?” most people chuckled and changed the subject.
Tyisha Brooks didn’t. She went home, opened her laptop, and sent Paige a clear message: Yes.
Two weeks later, she was boarding a plane to East Africa to help bring Alpha’s “2 Hour Learning” model to a refugee camp.
That moment—equal parts spontaneous and life-altering—was the latest in a lifetime of "yes" moments for Tyisha, whose journey to Alpha was anything but direct. It’s also the reason her story resonates with so many educators, who've become disillusioned by bureaucratic school systems that don't set teachers or students up for success.
A Childhood Calling
Ty can trace her decision to become a teacher back to a single person: her kindergarten teacher, Rose Taylor.
“She took an interest in me personally,” Tyisha recalls. “My parents were young, going through a divorce, and I was that well-behaved high achiever who didn’t cause any trouble. Ms. Taylor saw me, and she invested in me.”
Ms. Taylor bought her thick, all-in-one educational workbooks—math, language, science—and Tyisha devoured them. By the time she was six, she knew she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.
Not everyone approved. “My dad used to say, ‘You’re so smart, why would you only be a teacher?’” she laughs. “But in my heart of hearts, it was always teaching.”
That calling carried her through a Master’s in Education and nearly a decade teaching in Tennessee. Along the way, she built a reputation for forming deep connections with students and their families, that often lasted years beyond the classroom.
One of those students, Dottie, was so gifted that Tyisha personally encouraged her parents to seek advanced schooling. Years later, Dottie nominated her for the Barnes & Noble My Favorite Teacher contest in 2011—and she won! Tyisha and Dottie were honored together at a reception in Mufreesboro, a moment Tyisha still remembers as one of the highlights of her early teaching career.
Breaking Out of the System
But by 2017, Tyisha’s passion was colliding with a wall of bureaucracy.
“I couldn’t be creative anymore,” she says. “We were turning pages in sync, seven teachers in a grade level doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment. Great test scores, but no great memories.”
The joy was leaking out of teaching, and a side project was calling her name. Years earlier, she’d learned the intricate craft of installing “sister locks” - a tiny, versatile style of dreadlocks. Friends, strangers in grocery stores, even her optician encouraged her to do it professionally.
She turned her garage into a full-service salon, complete with shampoo bowls, dryers, and an elegant finish that made clients forget it was ever a garage. The demand was immediate and intense. Before long, it became full-time. The crazy part? Ty was making more than she had as a teacher, in fewer hours, with more flexibility.
But something was missing. “I missed that social impact,” she says. “The feeling that every day I was helping kids grow into who they’re meant to be.”
A Leap to Medellín
The next leap was even bigger: selling her house and moving to Medellín, Colombia, without ever having visited.
The move was inspired partly by a friend’s tales of retiring there on a modest severance package, and partly by Tyisha’s love of adventure. Her father came too, moving just two miles away.
In Medellín, she worked remotely for Pearson and even started life-coaching kids on growth mindset - a concept that would become one of the key reasons Alpha would feel like such a perfect fit later on.
Finding Alpha
While scrolling Instagram one day, Tyisha came across a post by Alpha’s visionary co-founder MacKenzie Price. The message stopped her mid-scroll: teachers should earn six figures, have the respect of professionals, and the freedom to teach in innovative ways. “I thought, ‘That’s the only job I’d move back to the U.S. for,’”.
“It wasn’t just the pay, though the pay mattered,” she says. “It was the alignment. Growth mindset? Check. Technology in learning? Check. Life skills? Check. I’d tested all of this on my own son from the time he was two. I knew it worked.”
She applied. Rejected. Waited six months, applied again. Rejected. Nevertheless, she persisted. On her third application, Ty finally got the dream job offer she’d been waiting for.
She relocated from Medellín to Texas in early 2024, started at Alpha Brownsville as a preschool Associate Guide... and quickly discovered this was not going to be like any other teaching job she’d had.
Designing a Preschool Program From Scratch
When Tyisha arrived, she discovered the teacher:student ratio of her dreams... just six students, AND an assistant guide to support her! She clarifies "at Alpha, they don’t pack classrooms just to hit a number. They keep the ratios small on purpose, because it lets us individualize learning and respond in real time.”
Another welcome surprise was the lack of bureacracy. “No red tape. No pacing guide. If a student brought something up in Town Hall, we could change it by lunchtime,” she says. “It was unreal. I’d be so excited to go to work, I couldn’t sleep.”
As enrollment grew, the pre-K classroom was temporarily relocated to the local Children’s Museum. The children were delighted, as the museum became an extension of the classroom, from scavenger hunts in the mock grocery store to lessons in self-control as students learned to walk past the pirate ship without stopping.
For Ty, the biggest challenge was learning to drive the school van... and to get twelve preschoolers buckled in under two minutes. But she took it all in her stride!
In early 2025, Tyisha was promoted to L2 Guide, which brought her a six-figure salary, the financial freedom to reunite her family in Brownsville, and a renewed sense of professional respect.
Saying Yes to Malawi
Then came Paige’s kitchen question. Ty’s quick reply put her at the top of the list for a partnership trip with Limitless Education. The goal: bring Alpha’s two-hour learning methodology to underserved schools in Malawi, including one inside the Dzaleka Refugee Camp.
Preparation was a whirlwind. She had just two weeks to get vaccinations, rearrange her life, and mentally prepare for a very different kind of classroom.
In Malawi, Tyisha worked alongside a team of fellow guides from other Alpha campuses to train local educators on everything from troubleshooting laptops to running passion projects. They adapted constantly — setting up Starlink on the roof of a van, inventing games when the internet dropped, combining groups to reteach core skills.
Lessons From the Refugee Camp
The Dzaleka Refugee Camp left the deepest impression.
“No one had a refrigerator, let alone electricity,” she says. “Kitchens were outdoors. Bathrooms were trenches. But the kids were so happy.”
She remembers a makeshift soccer ball, crafted from plastic bags and chicken wire, and the joy on the children’s faces when a visiting soccer coach kicked it around with them. She remembers handing out new headphones and watching eyes go wide.
And she remembers Aisha, a bright, confident student who quickly became a peer teacher, leaning over to help classmates in their own language.
“I thought I was grateful before,” Tyisha says. “But my gratitude level went up tenfold. It made me realize how much we take for granted.”
Bringing It Home
Malawi didn’t just broaden Tyisha’s horizons, it raised her profile back home. Shortly after returning from Malawi, she was invited to switch classrooms. Her answer, on theme, was "yes", and she now leads a combined fourth- and fifth-grade class.
She also returned with a renewed commitment to the core values that drew her to Alpha in the first place: real-world learning, adaptability, and giving students ownership of their education.
“Alpha epitomizes ‘limitless,’” she says. “It’s not just a word on a poster. Whether I’m in Brownsville or Malawi, I see students becoming independent, resilient learners — and I get to design the experiences that make that possible.”
Advice for Future Guides
For anyone thinking about applying to Alpha, Tyisha’s advice is simple:
“Don’t give up. It’ll happen when it’s meant to happen. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be — in Brownsville, in Malawi, with these students — because the timing was right. And when it happens for you, you’ll know it.”
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