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The illiteracy rate in Liberia is very high! The main problem is payment for teachers and then the expenses of an updated curriculum. Teachers are paid no more than US $5 daily on average. This is less than what a regular-size family needs to live daily. So, to overcome this problem, we’ve partnered with orphanages and community leaders to enhance underserved children’s education.
Our organization, the Liberia Literary Society, took a step ahead in solving this huge problem. We created a program named Teacher Jeanette No Child Left Behind! TJNCLB is an initiative that emphasizes the academic development of young children by making available books and workbooks that help parents and teachers inspire literacy and learning for children in developing African countries. We develop and publish academic books students can relate to culturally.
The importance of preparing students with a solid educational foundation will make a difference in the lives of these children as they prepare for their educational journey. We don’t know how much potential these kids have, but there is one way to find out. We provide access to quality education by bringing the classroom to the students.
This initiative is in honor of the matriarch of the Lewis family, Jeanette B. Lewis, who dedicated her entire life to the care of children; always surrounded by children, loving, teaching, or mothering. As a teacher to preschool and kindergarteners, her classrooms were more like being part of a big family than a classroom, no one got bullied and everyone felt belonged.
Experienced at both loving and mothering, Teacher Jeanette, as she was always called, eyes and voice were soft but had the right blend of assertiveness and confidence to keep her class in order. She never turned an advantage through belittling her students or stamping authority. She taught with the passion of a lifelong teacher, someone who lived to inspire a love of learning in all who sat under her voice. She treated her students as if she’d known them her whole life. And, she never used a cane.
Some teachers are just there for the paycheck. They arrive in class as if they’ve come to wage war on the students. Then there’s the cane that brings fear to every student while the teacher strides from desk to desk in quiet moments. When you put that much negative energy into the classroom, where do you expect that to go? Children aren’t naturally mean but bullying them and putting stress on them changes them.
With TJNCLB, children come first, so we ensure that hard work will be the priority to meet and surpass the high standard educational goals set for all students. A good education is the greatest gift you can give a child, it can be a golden ticket to the future of everyone in society; a chance to better oneself, to learn and grow.
We become people who thrive when our education is responsive to inborn curiosity and drive and respectful of how each brain needs to develop. Our children’s brain is damaged by a lack of love and nurture. A bad educational system induces further damage by producing teachers who are also damaged. Our goal as guardians of the next generation is to give students the best environment possible so that they develop better than we did, fully able to become successful socially complex citizens of the world.