About Me

Change Agent: With Child-N-Mind

This is my Masters in Early Childhood  Studies Journey Blog!  I  will post throughout my journey some of my personal  reflections,  things I am learning and aspire to do.  Please feel free to join me on my journey and add your comments and feedback!   Below is my first post that gives my self portrait!

I am a 33-year-old graduate of Eastern University where I obtained my degree in Urban Studies and Political Science.   Upon graduating in 2004, I knew I wanted to use my degree in an area related to urban issues; partly because of my own experience of growing up in inner-city Washington DC with my twin sister and single mother.  This led me on a 7-year journey working on various issues that impacted urban populations until the issue that most resonated with me emerged. Some of the issues I worked on included: food insecurity, housing and access to quality childcare.   It was in 2010 that the issue I knew I wanted to spend my life’s work on crystallized—early care and education.

I am someone whose favorite pass time is serving and it was in this role that my “life’s call” was discovered.   It was in 2010 and I had been selected among 100 candidates to be among the final 30 candidates to serve as a Public Ally with AmeriCorps.  For those of you who are not familiar, AmeriCorps is a federal volunteer service program started under President Bill Clinton,and is designed to give adults the opportunity to use their skills in an underserved community s around the country. Public Allies is a partner organization of AmeriCorps.

As a AmeiCorps/Public Ally, I spent the year serving in a underserved community in Pittsburgh, and interning for the city’s premier education advocacy group—A+ Schools. While in my role as Program Coordinator, I learned a lot about the urban public school system in general, and specifically as it related to the city of Pittsburgh.  One of the most alarming things I learned during my tenure was what educators call, the academic achievement gap.  As educators I am sure you know about this gap.  After learning that  the academic achievement gap starts at kindergarten and get progressively worst thereafter, I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to closing this gap by focusing on early care and education. It is for this reason that I enrolled in the MS in Child Studies program in the hopes of gaining the skills and networks necessary to achieving my personal vision of seeing the academic achievement gap closed in our lifetime.

Given that I am new to online college and haven’t taken an academic class since 2010, I anticipate that some of my challenges will be the learning curve related to taking online courses and writing graduate level papers.  However, one of my strengths is that I am an eager learner and persist through challenges, so  I think these qualities will help me tremendously  this term and throughout my master’s program. I am sure, in some aspect, these qualities will be helpful to the online community as well. Here’s to a great semester together!