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Meet Albert Wright

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Albert Wright.

Albert, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
What’s happening y’all. My name is Albert Wright and there are four things you need to know about me. #1: I am the son of a King. My family is everything to me, from my wife to my two boys, to my momma. #2. I have Dyslexia, ADHD and pretty severe OCD. I have learned that these letters are a part of who I am, but they do not define me. I have gained the wisdom to turn them from disabilities into Superpowers. #3. I was born in a little town called La Marque, Texas. I no longer live there, but I keep the city close to my heart. #4. I have an unbridled passion for the field of education. I have worked in education for my entire adult life and a little piece of my childhood. I was created to do what I do.

People look at me now and ask how I became an “overnight success” in my field. They don’t realize it took me ten years of working hard, learning how to become a Keynote speaker, honing my craft, working on comedic timing, and growing up enough to become transparent about my weaknesses on stage in front of thousands of people. Just because my name is suddenly well known in this field doesn’t mean there wasn’t blood, sweat and tears that went into it. I’ve realized it takes years to become an overnight success.

My roots run deep, and sometimes when you look at them, they don’t seem pretty, but I would not change a single thing about my background if given a choice. I was born in a little town called La Marque, Texas south of Houston. My mom worked hard to provide for us and sacrificed everything to make sure that we had food on the table and a roof over our heads. We didn’t have much, but we were in it together.

My dad left when I was 3, and he didn’t go somewhere glamorous like a prison or away to work in the oil fields, he simply moved 20 minutes down the road and decided he didn’t want anything to do with us again. At the time, I didn’t understand, but I knew early on, I had to become the man of the family. It was a heavy load for such a little boy to carry, but I didn’t get the choice.

As soon as I was able, I started working odd jobs to help earn money for food, rent and any extra things I needed. Even though my mom worked all the time, sometimes our needs exceeded the money she had to provide. It wasn’t until I was fully grown that I realized the meals when she claimed she “wasn’t hungry” and gave me all the food she had cooked was because she wanted to make sure I never went hungry, and so she would go without. The way my momma raised me taught me to be happy with what I received. I learned to respect hard work and dedication. My mom is the hardest worker I’ve ever met, even to this day.

I remember as a little kid. I started praying for wisdom. Such a random, weird thing for a kid to pray for, right? But somehow, I knew that I needed wisdom, to help my mom, and to make it through this life I was given. I think God answered my prayer because all of my friends would come to me for advice, on life, on girls, on family drama, and soon adults started treating me like an adult, asking for advice, about work, and even marriage.

Even though I asked for and received wisdom, I had a tough time in school. I was always getting into fights and causing chaos. My teachers had no idea what to do with me, academically, but I was just charming enough that they passed me from grade to grade, even if I didn’t know the material. It wasn’t until I was 30 and I was still trying to get my Bachelor’s degree, studying 30 and 40 hours a week, and still failing, that my wife, Brooke told me I needed to get tested. So I went, got tested and was diagnosed with pretty severe Dyslexia, ADHD and OCD. At 30, the diagnostician told me I read on a third grade level. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. All the wind was knocked out of my body and for a moment, I thought he was calling me stupid.

I distinctly remember him saying, “You’re not stupid, your brain just doesn’t work like the rest of us; you need accommodations to be successful in school.” I left the office crying my eyes out, grateful to finally have a name to the monster on my back. This doctor had unknowingly given me something to fight. He had named my opponent, and now I had a fighting chance.

It wasn’t until I researched more about dyslexia that I realized I didn’t have an opponent to fight, instead I had a superpower. I was now protected by the American’s with Disabilities Act, and the college I was attending gave me accommodations that allowed me to go from D’s and F’s to having such good grades I got on the Dean’s list for my Bachelor’s degree in education and even graduating with honors for my Masters in Education. Most people are proud when they graduate, but for me, it was a lifelong achievement. I finally found a way to become successful in school. My academic success finally reflected the wisdom and experience I had gained in life. This was a defining moment in my personal life. I am so proud of my degrees that every single time I sign my name, I include those three letters I earned, Albert Wright, M.Ed.

I wanted to get into the teaching field because I knew the power that one person could have when they believe in you. My father wasn’t in my life, and there were a lot of other kids that lived that same single parent environment. I wanted to be a positive role model in their life and show them that they were special, they were wanted, they were loved. As a male teacher, in early education, it was my job to do the fun, guy things and play sports with them, but also to read to them, hug them, and show them, unconditional love.

I started as a three year old teacher, worked with the fours class, toddlers, two year old, and even infants. I became an afterschool director, then a center director, then a regional director, an Education Specialist, and then finally a Master Trainer, training teachers how to work with children. My favorite age to work with was after school. They called me the Pied Piper of Afterschool because I was running after school programs with up to 500 kids in one room at a time, and I could quiet them with one call of “If you can hear my voice, clap one time!”

I started my own training business in early 2011, called Wright One Training, and started traveling all over the Dallas area, training. Then my audience became all over the state of Texas, and then Nationwide. I’ve been honored as Trainer of the Year for Texas twice and was recognized as one of the top 25 trainers in the nation by the National Afterschool Association.

In 2005, I was able to bring my wife home from a job at a major software company in Irving to work for Wright One Training full time. She is now our Director of Operations, a job she loves doing and travels with me everywhere. She helped me create our Wright One Training clothing line, with catchy teacher t-shirt designs and illustrated the children’s book I wrote dyslexia is my Superpower.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have always had to be an overcomer. I overcame my dad leaving as a child. Then when I was 16, my house burned down with all my belongings in it. My momma and I got out safely, but there is nothing like watching your childhood home burning to the ground and realizing you have nothing left. No toothbrush, no clothes, not even shoes on your feet, nothing. I was working as an assistant youth pastor for a local church, and my mentor came over as soon as he heard, and the church and the community helped us find a place to stay, and found our clothes, and helped us replace what was lost, piece by piece. People came by every single day and helped us clear out the torched belongings, and then build the house back up, board by board, shingle by shingle. We were never alone in our devastation.

The way people showed up for us helped shape another part of me. I learned the lesson. When people are in need, you show up. Even to this day, when people are in need, we show up. If someone is in the hospital, you show up. Don’t just ask how you can help, find something you can tangibly do, and do it. This is how we can survive hardship, and even tragedy, together. Show up. Becoming a trainer also came out of a low point in my life. When you look at me, you don’t think a typical trainer. I am a 300lb black man with a stutter and a lisp. Oh yeah, and I have severe dyslexia, remember? That sometimes means when I am on stage in front of hundreds of people, I mess up reading the words on the screen—the words I created. And I teach Teachers. Ironic huh?

I got into this field of education because it was my calling. I became a trainer by losing my job. At that time, I had seen success in my work. My current title was the School Age Education Specialist over North and South DFW. The economy had dipped, and the company I worked for was laying off 1/3 of its workforce, and since I had only been there three years, and my peer had been there 15 years, I got axed.

I had no idea what to do, I’d never been fired before. I took some time to process and then realized that everyone was laying off, so jobs would not be abundant, even with my skills, and it was time to do something drastic. If I couldn’t find a job, I needed to create one. Teachers always need training hours every year, and I had a lot of success training a few classes for my former employer. I missed being in the classroom, but I realized that I could reach 30 kids yearly in my class, or I could reach hundreds of thousands of kids by training their teachers, by reminding teachers why they got into the field in the first place.

Being successful in this field is not all perks, though. Almost all of my training is on the weekend, which means that when we are earning income, my family is working every weekend, which means that we miss out on a lot of birthday parties, graduation parties, family reunions, weddings, and other big life events. If my birthday lands on the weekend, most likely we are working, if my anniversary lands on the weekend, we work. Not everyone understands why we can’t block out special days like that, but my entire week’s salary is based on working that one Saturday. It would be like asking my brother to take an unpaid week from work to attend a 2-hour birthday for my nephew. It takes time for the family to adjust and for friends to understand. On the other side, having this type of work schedule means that our weekday in-office schedule is more flexible, so if anyone ever has any big events during the week, like 2 pm on a Tuesday, we can be there!

My wife and I are adoptive parents. My two boys came to us out of the foster system, and in the short time they had been alive, had already been more beat up and broken by the world than most of us will ever be. Being a foster parent is hard. When a child comes into your home, it is because something bad happened. Kids don’t get put in the foster system because everything is going great. Foster kids come into your home broken by the world. At that point, for as long as they stay at my house, it is my job as a father to put back together something I didn’t break. It’s not fair to the children, and it’s not fair to our hearts. We signed up to foster, knowing that we had to love them openhandedly, and completely, so that if they stayed, they were loved completely and whole-heartedly, and if they left. The love and safety we shared with them during the time they were with us, hopefully, put their life on a new trajectory. We opened our home to five boys in total, two sets of brothers. We ended up being able to adopt 2 of the boys and I will dedicate my life to showing them how loved and valued they are, that the circumstances surrounding their both do not define who they are or who they can become. I pray that they become strong men, able to lead families and one day shepherd the hearts of their children, and their children, until the legacy we have left is not one of the broken families, abandonment and heartache, but rather redemption and restoration.

One of the biggest struggles right now is the COVID-19 Quarantine. I went from having every weekend booked as a trainer or a Keynote to all of the conferences for the foreseeable future canceled or postponed for months. No jobs mean no income, zero, zip, zilch. It is tough to know that all of this is out of my control, and needed to find another way to engage my audience and pivot the business to create a new income source from scratch, again. My wife and I took a week off to try to figure it out, and strategize, and then we began filming editing and producing my weekly series on YouTube: 2 minutes with Albert. The videos are created to be lighthearted but also provide tangible tips and strategies for parents who have found themselves becoming substitute teachers as the school has been canceled for the year and parents are now in charge of online learning. I love this new avenue and will be continuing the videos even after the Quarantine is lifted.

Please tell us about your business.
I created Wright One Training to help teachers find a way to love even the kids that are the hardest to love. I specialize in teaching Behavior Management and Modification classes. I am the self proclaimed “Behavior Detective” and in every single class I train, I remind educators that all behavior means something. It is our job to drill down to find out what the child is trying to communicate, and meet that need, before trying to change the behavior. I consult with businesses, schools, non-profits, and parents.

Being a Public speaker, I am constantly under the spotlight, but instead of boasting, I feel like it is my job to be open and honest because in my experience, people will learn much more from my weaknesses rather than my strengths. My pieces of training are memorable, because I am entertaining, cracking jokes, encouraging people to laugh at themselves and not to take everything so seriously. I also remind people that they have a purpose and to have success. They need to fulfill their purpose, even if that means starting over and going back to their roots. People who attend my sessions laugh, and they cry, and sometimes they cry from laughing. But my goal is that they leave changed. I want them to be motivated to change the world, one child at a time.

Under the recent Quarantine, I have started training online, and consulting online with schools and even with parents. I love talking to parents about specific behavioral issues they are seeing with their child and helping them find new ways to have quality interactions and to motivate the child in a completely inspiring way and assisting families to directly is incredibly fulfilling. Some of my families have started calling me “The Behavior Detective,” which I am honored by. Sherlock Holmes inspires me. Mysteries fascinate me, and when a child is exhibiting an atypical behavior, I want to solve the mystery and help the family.

I run in some pretty cool circles. I get to speak with famous people, influencers, world travelers, and policymakers. I’ve even been the Keynote for an event put on by the office of the Governor and the Texas Education Agency. I enjoy getting to meet and hang with all of these influential “important” people, but my favorite thing is to talk with and help teachers, the people with boots on the ground, who come to class every day and pour their hearts into the future. They are the ones who have the most influence on our future leaders since they have the future in their classroom.

As a public speaker, most people think I love to be in the spotlight. But honestly, because of my severe OCD, there are some days I would rather not get out of bed at all. OCD is extremely weird, and it looks different to different people. For me, OCD is like standing in the rain and being forced to focus on every single raindrop simultaneously as it falls. It’s like being at a football game. You aren’t able to sit back and enjoy the game because I am noticing the players and the way they interact, the band and all the instruments. Who forgot to press their uniform, the man who didn’t like mustard on his hotdog, but is eating it anyway, the woman who is upset with her husband three rows down and is sitting slightly too far from him. My OCD makes me miss the big picture because I am focused all the little things, and memorizing all the details, even when they don’t matter. Noticing the details is a huge asset of mine because I can easily discern problems when schools and businesses ask me for assistance. Still, personally, it can be problematic—my mind races when I am on stage. I always wear a set of beads to hold and count in my hands while I’m talking that helps keep me calm. I always wear the same type of outfit and have the same water bottle on stage and wear the same jewelry because as I’m noticing all the details of all the things around me, it is important for me to be able to see and touch and taste the things that are familiar. I listen to the same artists before I get on stage to help hype me up and get me in the right mindset. I’m very open with my audience when I’m having a rough day, and when I am pushing through. More often than not my worst days are the day that I have the most people coming up to me to tell me that they were moved by the fact that I can walk on stage and speak life into a crowd even when my OCD feels debilitating. They share their stories with me of how they are currently trying to overcome obstacles, to put their life back together, or how they have been inspired to get up and try again, just by me being obedient enough to walk on stage especially when I don’t want to. I’m honored to be even a small part of their story, and it makes it all worth it.

When I look at my humble beginnings, I’m incredibly proud that I have written and published a children’s book called Dyslexia is my Superpower. It is the story of a boy named Little Albert and the trouble he would cause during reading time to get out of having to read out loud. It is my way of rewriting history and showing how I wished a teacher would have engaged me early on and said look, even though you have dyslexia, these are your strengths and this is how we can work together.

As a person with dyslexia who struggled to have basic reading skills, it is so surreal to me to have been published several times in educational magazines and to be a Keynote, talking to thousands of people at a time. I guess the biggest change is that I used to be someone who used to get in trouble for talking in class, now I get paid for it!

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite memories from childhood was being a part of a State Championship football team my junior and senior years of high school. I always liked sports, but in my town, football was everything. My town was full of heartache and poverty, and wins in football joined the whole town together as a community and gave us something to cheer for. I remember during my sophomore year, the team made it to the finals and we were all so excited to cheer them on, The energy and positivity of the town were palpable. Then the team made it to the end of the game and we lost, my whole city cried. I decided at that moment I was going to train and try out for football the next year and work harder than I ever had before to get back to the finals and win the championship. I made it on the team and we practiced for hours and hours every single day to get our strength and conditioning up.

We bonded as a team and we played our hearts out every single game, and we made it to the finals and we had the honors of playing the championship game in the Astrodome. I will never forget the sound of the cheers echoing through that tunnel as we waited to race out onto the field before the game began. We gave that game everything we had and won the State championship both my Junior and Senior years.

It felt so good to win, but it felt even better to give our city a win, something for the community to rally around, and something positive to be known for, something that still stays with my heart to this day.

Pricing:

  • Parent Consulting Sessions – $75/hr
  • Teacher Consulting Sessions – $75/hr
  • Professional Development – $175/hr
  • Keynote Sessions – $1,000-5,000/hr

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