As data points and deficit models take center stage in education, turning students into statistics and struggles into labels, Philisa Bennett is a living example of the transformative power of change. She does more than teach; she rewrites stories, reimagines possibilities, and re-establishes the connections between the present and the possibilities of the future.
From a small South Carolina college town to the vanguard of educational innovation, her journey illuminates what happens when compassion meets curriculum design, when trauma-informed practice intersects with transformative vision, and when one educator refuses to accept that any student is beyond reach. This is the story of a woman who sees promise where systems see risk, who creates pathways where others see dead ends, and who understands that education’s true purpose extends far beyond classroom walls. It reshapes communities, rewrites destinies, and rebuilds hope in hearts that have forgotten how to dream.
The Foundation: A Teacher’s Heart
Before degrees adorned her walls or groundbreaking curricula bore her name, Philisa possessed something that cannot be taught: a teacher’s soul. Childhood play sessions with cousins became impromptu classrooms, with young Philisa invariably assuming the instructor’s role. This wasn’t childhood fantasy; it was destiny declaring itself. Her parents, neither of whom walked across a college graduation stage, understood education’s transformative power with the clarity that often comes from its absence. They planted in their daughter’s heart an unshakeable conviction: education unlocks doors that poverty tries desperately to seal shut.
Mrs. White, her guidance counselor, recognized this spark and carefully tended it toward higher education. Philisa initially pursued Electrical Engineering for two and a half years before recognizing a fundamental dissonance. Engineering offered problem-solving satisfaction; teaching offered life transformation. She redirected toward Secondary Education with an English concentration, financing this dream through three simultaneous jobs. When one mentor teacher proclaimed her unfit for the classroom, she found another who understood that unconventional methods often reach students when conventional approaches cannot. Graduation arrived not as culmination but as launching point for a career touching countless lives.
Building Expertise Through Challenge
Her first teaching decade unfolded as a masterclass in adaptability. Teaching English and multiple subjects, she frequently created entire curricula from blank pages- no textbooks, no templates. Where others saw only absence, Philisa discovered artistic freedom. Curriculum writing evolved from necessity into intellectual passion, a medium through which she could architect uniquely tailored learning experiences. This creative work drew her to graduate school for a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction. The year after earning her degree brought upheaval: relocation, divorce, and darkness. Rather than retreating, she poured pain into purpose, transforming grief into growth. This difficult period prepared her for the role that would define her career.
The Turning Point: Finding Her Calling
The following year delivered a promotion redefining her professional identity. Leadership of the district’s alternative school program arrived, and with it, her true calling crystallized. These students carried society’s heaviest labels: “at-risk,” “troubled,” “difficult.” Philisa immediately rejected this deficit vocabulary, refusing to brand students with terms predicting failure. Instead, she calls them “at-promise,” reframing entire narratives from inevitable decline to unrealized potential. This represented revolutionary reimagining of student futures. Her vision extended beyond graduation statistics toward equipping students with life-navigation tools. The vague job description said only “manage coursework,” so she created her own blueprint- streamlining systems, mastering technology, identifying gaps, and filling them. When the counselor departed, creating an emotional support vacuum, Philisa developed comprehensive lessons on mental and emotional well-being for young people whose lives had rarely modeled healthy coping mechanisms.
The Birth of G.R.O.W. Time
Recognizing that graduation merely opens the door to life’s real challenges, Philisa architected something revolutionary: the G.R.O.W. Time curriculum. The carefully chosen acronym- Growth, Resilience, Optimism, and Wealth, represents four pillars supporting holistic human development. This comprehensive framework addresses life skills, college and career readiness, financial literacy, mental and emotional well-being, social intelligence, and growth mindset cultivation. She had designed it believing her students needed these tools. The pandemic would prove just how desperately the entire world needed them.
March 2020 arrived like an earthquake, shattering education’s foundation overnight. As schools shuttered, Philisa recognized interrupted learning represented merely surface wounds. Beneath lay unprecedented trauma- families losing loved ones, parents losing livelihoods, and teenagers losing stability while navigating mental health crises without support. She constructed digital lifelines through online platforms and Zoom sessions. For students lacking internet, she met them in restaurant parking lots, transforming Wi-Fi hotspots into classrooms. Philisa traveled extra miles for seniors whose futures hung in balance, even engineering one junior’s early graduation during chaos.
The pandemic exposed another vulnerability. Many students had worked restaurant jobs, contributing vital family income. When establishments closed or cut staff, households lost financial lifelines. Philisa immediately expanded G.R.O.W. Time to incorporate financial literacy, not abstract theory, but practical knowledge about budgeting, saving, wealth-building. Breaking generational poverty requires more than diplomas; it demands financial education typically reserved for privileged communities.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit Takes Form
The pandemic clarified what Philisa had perhaps always known: her work demanded expansion beyond one alternative school’s walls. In 2021, she launched LBC Educational Consulting, transforming pedagogical expertise into entrepreneurial enterprise. This transition flowed naturally for someone whose entrepreneurial spirit had manifested since childhood- whether crafting jewelry, styling hair, or installing car stereo systems during her Engineering phase. As her professional arsenal expanded to encompass test preparation, adult education, college counseling, career development, and educational technology, she recognized the breadth of transformation she could offer her community as tutor, GED instructor, and college assistance counselor.
Education as Community Transformation
For Philisa, education transcends individual achievement. It constructs thriving communities. She grew up witnessing how poverty and limited access create invisible walls around potential. In her college town, many people sharing her heritage support the university through labor and loyalty yet tragically never experience higher education from inside. These observations ignited her determination to democratize educational access. Philisa now serves on boards for The Friends of the Clemson Area African American Museum, The Pendleton Foundation for Black History and Culture, and The Shaw Center for Housing and Economic Growth, teaching about genealogy, heirs’ property, and wills- knowledge essential for generational wealth. Her commitment extends to evening GED classes and even driving buses when transportation threatens educational access.
Global Perspective, Local Impact
In 2018, an educational mission trip to Lusaka, Zambia, crystallized truths about teaching’s essence that years in American classrooms had only hinted at. Philisa taught students spanning grades five through ten, delivered professional development to faculty at Project Lazarus Community School and SonShine School, organized activities and distributed necessities at Matthew 25 Orphanage, and dedicated a library.
This experience ranks among her life’s most transformative moments, second only to motherhood itself. Working in classrooms stripped of technological bells and whistles, Philisa discovered that effective teaching requires only two irreplaceable elements: deep content knowledge and infectious passion. Though technically work, these mission trips ignited something profound within her- a teaching fire she hadn’t known smoldered so intensely, and gave her another place on Earth to call home.
Balancing Multiple Roles
Philisa navigates a complex constellation of roles: educator, entrepreneur, board member, and single mother shepherding two adolescents toward adulthood. These responsibilities generate daily pressures requiring intentional management. She employs sophisticated self-care architecture- bimonthly therapy, prayer and meditation, journaling, reading, exercise, comedy shows, and front porch relaxation. Each technique releases stress before it calcifies into something damaging.
Yet travel remains Philisa’s preferred restoration mechanism. Two landscapes speak most profoundly to her spirit: beaches and mountains. While urban experiences engage her intellectually, she discovers deep peace surrounded by mountain majesty or surrendering to ocean rhythms. These environments permit authentic self-inhabitation, unencumbered by obligations. Her annual July solo “me-cations” before each school year represent sacred renewal time.
Philisa balances solitary restoration with communal celebration. She travels with her children and parents during school breaks, creating family memories and modeling rest’s importance. Different friend circles accompany her to birthday celebrations and music festivals, like the July 2025 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, where cultural richness and friendship intersect. Most recent journeys have traversed domestic landscapes, though international adventures beckon.
A Legacy of Impact
Philisa’s professional path demonstrates what occurs when a teacher rejects constraints- those imposed by systems and those that students internalize about themselves. She perceives promise where others catalog problems, potential where conventional wisdom sees only deficits, and pathways where bureaucracy erects dead ends. Her G.R.O.W. Time curriculum transcends mere educational innovation; it embodies a philosophical revolution that views students as complete human beings requiring not just academic instruction but emotional intelligence, financial literacy, and social competence.
Recognition has followed Philisa’s work. The Clemson City Council honored her volunteer contributions to the Clemson Area African American Museum- a moment that brought her family together alongside civic leaders to celebrate service transcending self-interest. Classroom grants have funded field trips exposing her students to area colleges and industries, deliberately expanding their sense of what futures might hold. These accolades matter not for the honors they confer but for the visibility they create around work that transforms lives of one student at a time.
Her driving passion centers on a simple but profound ambition: leaving the world measurably better than she found it. By educating herself, she educates others. Those others educate still more. The ripples extend outward in ever-widening circles, touching communities she may never visit, and students she may never meet. In Philisa, education discovers not merely a practitioner but a prophet; someone who sees not what is but what could be, someone who understands that teaching represents not information transfer but human transformation.
She operates from a conviction both simple and revolutionary: every student deserves an advocate who refuses capitulation, who sees their latent promise when society sees only their present problems, and who equips them not merely for standardized tests but for life’s unpredictable examinations. In Philisa, thousands of students have discovered exactly an educator whose heart chose teaching long before credentials formalized the calling, and whose commitment to transformation continues reshaping individual lives into collective futures. She teaches her students that they are not at-risk but at-promise, not limited by circumstances but liberated by knowledge, and not defined by where they start but determined by where they dare to dream. In doing so, Philisa doesn’t just change lives; she changes what her students believe possible about their own lives. And that changes everything.
