Claudia Tucker

I didn't have the greatest childhood. I am the first in my family to attend college. I come from a household where Dad did what he did, and I saw a lot growing up. My mom stuck in there and worked, and she had a great work ethic, as did my grandparents. They encouraged myself and my siblings to do more than what they did in life, to push. Even though I had my first child at 16 and got married at 18, divorced at 21, I would say that leaning in on knowing who I am, what I want to achieve in life, wanting to do more for my own children, and having the prayers of my parents, my mom (because my dad passed when I was 21), having the prayers from her and my grandmother, and just wanting to do better drove me to try to do even more and show my own children that they can do it. Being married at 18 with 3 children, living in poverty, I did not attend college until maybe I was in my late 20s. Going back to school took a lot of courage, and I worked my way through, and with the grace of God, this is where I am now. I was the girl living from the projects, having children young, and people already counted me out. My goal was to do all that God wanted me to do, and in order to do that, I had to form a relationship with Him so that I can hear His voice and follow His plan. My plan wasn't working. Surrendering to Him, I have become Dr. Claudia Tucker.

The best advice I received was from my mentor during my doctoral journey. She told me that if you fall, get back up. Don't be afraid to fail. It's what we do with that failure. What are you gonna do next? Are you just gonna give up? Or are you going to continue to pursue it? That really helped me, especially being young and having some early challenges.

There are challenges when it comes to behavior with the children and parental involvement. Finding quality teachers who want to teach is difficult because we are in a serious teacher shortage. Even with salary, teachers don't make very much money and are having to purchase things on their own for their own classrooms. There are a lot of challenges, and it comes from funding. It comes from even having the staff in order to take care of the needs of the children. Right now, two or three 5th grade classes have about 30 to almost 35 children in a classroom. Because of the politics of education, it's gotten harder, and it's hard to find teachers. It's hard to find substitute teachers. We're living in a pivotal time now where the village needs to really show up as the village.