2022-100-Faces-Book - Flipbook - Page 75
Karen
Teacher. Role model. Confidante.
At 15th Avenue North Learning Academy, Karen greets
each family—each morning—by name.
And those skills go far beyond letters, shapes
and numbers.
She’s the academy’s assistant director and pre-K
teacher. Her job is to make sure that every child that
comes through her door is prepared for kindergarten.
Karen and her team are giving kids the socialemotional intelligence, the confidence, the discipline to
succeed in kindergarten and beyond.
“We do a curriculum that’s structured,” she says. “It
gets them ready to take that next journey, have
confidence in what they want to do and how they can
do it. They have that confidence when they leave.”
She remembers one family who was new to the center.
At a previous center, the child had been hit in the face
by an adult and dealt with a lot of anger.
Growing up, Karen always knew she wanted to be a
teacher. She worked at Fannie Battle Day Home in high
school with elementary-aged students. She went to
school for business education but realized she wanted
to get back into early education when she’d drop her
kids off at Martha O’Bryan each morning.
More than 26 years later, Karen says the shift in child
care has been amazing to be a part of.
“It used to be when people bought their kids to child
care, it was just daycare. It felt like babysitting,”
she says. “But as the times came up, they started
implementing all these curriculums and the teachers
are having passion on what they do and how they
implement it. And knowing that these kids are going
home learning every day.”
15th Avenue is a United Way partner agency and
emerging Read to Succeed site. Read to Succeed
is a comprehensive early childhood learning model
that builds academic and social-emotional skills for
children from birth through age five. Through Read to
Succeed, children learn the skills they need to reach
their highest potential.
His mother said the previous center would isolate him
because of his anger. And he didn’t know how to play
with other children.
“I told her, ‘We’re going to work on this,’ ’’ she recalls.
“Yes, he had his moments but when he left, he was
the sweetest kid ever. He learned those skills that he
needed in a short amount of time. He went from being
around people who left him behind, who didn’t want
to be bothered … to being around people who loved
him and wanted him no matter what problems he
went through. With us, he could have his, ‘I’m just mad
today. I’m just going to scream today.’ But at the end of
the day, he always gave myself and Ms. Penny a hug
no matter how much he’s done.”
Karen says the boy’s mom was nervous about him
starting kindergarten. Karen decided to check on him
and found out he was excelling.
“That was one of the success stories for me.”
15th Avenue North Learning Academy
