‘Create Something Special’: DeJané Cade ‘26, CTEC ‘25

It takes a special kind of person to turn an interview around on the interviewer, especially when that person is only 19 years old, but by the end of our time together, DeJané Cade was the one doing the interviewing! Watching her move throughout campus, she turned every new person she met into a networking opportunity – who anyone else might see as a stranger is, to her, someone she can learn from, bond with, and make a lasting impact on. It’s not hard to see, then, how someone like that might make an excellent educator. 

Charlotte Teacher Early College, also known as CTEC, almost seems like a cheat code for students who already know they want to go into education. Students can complete over half their degree while still technically enrolled in public high school, so they take their courses for free instead of paying college tuition. As a freshman in high school, Cade was already certain of her path, so she made the transfer from the International Baccalaureate program elsewhere in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to CTEC to better align with that trajectory.

For a 15-year-old to know her path so clearly might seem strange, but to hear it from Cade, it’s a calling in her blood. “My grandfather was a teacher, and a professor at that. He came to America, migrated from Liberia in 2010, and he was my role model. I knew I wanted to have an impact on my future students as much as he had had an impact on his students… I feel as though the generation that’s coming up, they need mentors. They need somebody who looks like them or has similar experiences, and I think that I’ve gone through a lot of things that I can help guide younger children through.”

Wise Beyond Her Years

Even at 19, Cade is already cognizant of some of the challenges that face her when she gets to the full-time workforce. “The crazy thing about our field is that it’s not about the money, obviously, so it relies more on passion. That’s when you can really sprout and grow in your field, when you’re doing it because you love it. You’ve really got to care about those kids.”

And she’s faced some challenges already, dedicating herself so early. She’s missed some of the traditional high school traditions, like homecoming or football games on Fridays with her friends. But when asked, she said, “If that’s something you value more, you might want to go to a traditional high school. But before you do that, think about the big picture of things. When most of my peers graduate at 18, 19 years old, they’ll have a whole four years ahead of them in school for their undergraduate degree, whereas I’m getting it done in half the time or [less], so it really pays off in the end.” 

She’s also very aware that even at the pre-service level, there’s problems with teacher shortages and retention. “I wish more people knew about the program… and I wish that more people who got into the program would stay in the program. When I was in my junior year, a lot of students felt like they wanted the traditional high school experience back, so they went back to their home school… but I really soaked up the opportunity – you get to make relationships with professors and other people in the college, so instead of starting from scratch with networking fresh out of high school, you can do it while you’re in high school. You can directly speak to people about your career and ask them questions.” She went on to enumerate a litany of issues that cause teachers to leave the profession – clearly well-informed on all fronts – and shared how both university faculty who taught her introductory education courses as well as guest speakers brought to CTEC had given her insight on ways to handle those challenges. 

In reflecting on her journey to CTEC, Cade recalled in younger years that adults didn’t really encourage the idea of her becoming a teacher. “The biggest thing that adults put on you as a kid is that you want to make money when you get older. You want success. But the thing is that none of us are here where we are without teachers; teachers are needed. And I think we can still become teachers and still advocate for ourselves to have reasonable pension and salaries and things like that, because education is very important. I would tell my younger self not to go after something just because of the money, go after what you love, and I’ve found what I love.”

The Path Ahead

As she graduates from CTEC this week, she has also been admitted to UNC Charlotte’s Cato College of Education to complete her Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education as a North Carolina Teaching Fellow, with a planned graduation in December of 2026. Choosing to continue at Charlotte was easy for her for several reasons. “I’m a Charlotte native, so I’m a little biased,” she laughed. “But I encouraged my friends to stay because for one, the education program is amazing, but also, Charlotte needs teachers!”

She’s also part of a larger Niner family. Both her mother and brother are Charlotte grads – Sociology for the former, Africana Studies for the latter – and her mom very intentionally chose to return to college when her son began his undergraduate years so they could go on the journey together. Now, matriarch Jane Cade is returning to Charlotte yet again for her Master’s degree to share in the Niner journey with her daughter, as both mother and daughter will start in the fall. “I have special ties to UNC Charlotte,” the younger Cade said, “and I just feel connected. It feels like home.”

Her dream after graduating college is to go right into the classroom, although she can’t decide if she’d rather focus on reading and literacy with younger students or work with older elementary students who have started to gain more independence. “They really start thinking on their own and questioning things, and I really love that, their curiosity just booms.”

And it won’t stop there. She has dreams of getting her Master’s or even a doctorate degree and would stay at Charlotte to do so, and even waxed poetic about donating enough to the university one day to get something named after herself or her family. 

But her entrepreneurial mind is also turning over new ideas every day. “I want to start a nonprofit centered on education, so that students can get resources like technology, support, and mentors. A lot of times, what I’ve noticed with the kids that I assistant teach, they don’t have people to read to them at home, so they don’t fall in love with reading at a young age, and they miss out on falling in love with education in general… it takes a village, both inside and outside the classroom, and I’d hope that my nonprofit could target both of those: helping provide in-classroom support, but also outside the classroom, spreading awareness to parents and families and helping them speak up.”

A Multifaceted Life

To say Cade is entrepreneurial is a bit of an understatement. She has her own crochet fashion house, Angel Love Crochet & Co., and has received quite the recognition for her work, appearing on The Tamron Hall Show and in several fashion magazines. 

But she wants folks to know that she contains multitudes. “You can have several different interests and hobbies and careers. You don’t have to go down the straight path with everything cookie-cutter. Your story isn’t going to be everyone else’s story. With me, I’m a business owner, and I’ve found a great way to manage being a business owner while also following and running behind my passion of teaching. So I encourage people not to only look at their career as this straight line, but be adventurous, take risks, find out what else you like, because you might find that those careers or those passions might come together and create something special.” 

Wise words from one so young. If this is DeJané Cade at 19, who knows what incredible things she can accomplish, especially with her Charlotte degree in hand?