Over the years, I knew I would be a teacher. It started as a little girl, when I would line my teddy bears and dolls up to play school with me. It was every now and then that my sisters, cousins, or neighbors would join me. I think the majority of them only joined me when they got bored. It really didn't matter to me as long as I was teaching.
It was through grammar school, I'm from the Southside of Chicago, that teachers fed into my love for teaching and learning. I can and will say I was not the best student, actually I was the typical C and D student with a few B's sprinkled throughout the report card. It was one that held true that I wanted and would become a teacher.
After attending high school, I realized that college was the next step and although it wasn't easy, it happened. I finished, but there was more work to do. I was hired for my first teaching job at a Charter School on the far Southside of Chicago. It was during that time that we had a principal, who had a vision to teach all students how to read. He knew this was not really possible for an intermediate teacher or middle school teacher to do with their busy classroom schedules. So he started an afterschool program geared toward reading. This program sent middle school and immediate students to primary teachers to learn phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension and so much more. Can I say that this was a judgement free zone? Each and every student knew we had one goal and one goal only. I needed to be able to teach them to read by the end of the year. As a first year teacher, man did I have pressure riding on my shoulders. But it happened by the end of the year, all but one of them was fluently reading. Twice a week for over 20 weeks we met, read, studied, practiced, and set goals to be crushed.
It was after that year that One by One Learning was started. I knew with just a little support, a few times a week those students who were below level could be reading, writing, and doing math at or above level. So I started One by One Learning with the goal to assist with closing the achievement gap for students in their earlier educational years.
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