Marchelle Pierre

I come from a long line of educators who I promised I was never going to be in the education system, so it's so funny when I started actually finding myself in education. I had a business background and worked in business first where we got paid very good but worked a lot of hours, and I thought education would be easier because it's less hours of work, but not really. What I've learned is that educators work hard and don't get compensated enough, but it's a job where you actually get your impact through people. You know, you've dealt with somebody maybe in elementary, you see them in college, you see them with their families, and you have to remember you had a part of that. So the investment in people is what impacts even greater. Everybody had teachers, we all learned from a teacher, so first you knock it, then you become one, and you're like wow, you shocked yourself.

Do what makes you happy so that you will even do it when you're not getting paid for it, or you're getting paid even better. So making sure you have that passion. And that's what we try to relate to our students - we're going to show you a lot of different areas. You may be in a robotics class, but if that's not your little niche, that's fine. We'll show you some arts and crafts, and maybe that might be your little niche. Everybody has their own personality, you know what you like, and if you can monetize that, that's how you can get it done.

The nonprofit sector is a very interesting beast, and I find that in the nonprofit sector, they feel like oh, I'm just here to provide a service. But everybody must understand it's a real business. You have to have funding, you have to have money to make all your wonderful impact. So if you're in the nonprofit space, yes, you are more driven to give your service, but you still need to make sure that your funding is secure. People are like oh, I'm just here to do a service, and it's like well, how are you gonna get paid? Oh, we don't get paid. How is the program gonna work? We have to wait for gifts. You have to make sure that if this is what you're gonna be doing, you have to make sure that the two are connected. So just making sure that you don't only think about the service part, but you think about the entire business. It's a business, it's just one that gives back to the community.

Our biggest challenges are actually keeping kids on a regular basis because the turnover rate is very high. Everybody's moving around a lot, and we continue to have to find new youth because they either move around the country or the city a lot, so we're always looking for the next youth. We offer more out-of-school programming, but in our micro-school where we have a small close-knit group, we're able to foster them for like the last 5 years and we can see the growth and potential. We really feel the challenge is just not assuming that everybody knows everything and really teaching them through actually doing. School is like so boring these days - it's a lot of time but not a lot is being covered or kept in their brains. But we just have them a few hours out of the week, and every time they come they're doing something so they're really excited and it's staying with them. I work with the school system too, and a lot of the challenges I see in the schools is that the kids are just so bored. We give them an alternative to learning and let them know that guys, you gotta be learning for the rest of your life - we learn every day as adults, so you might as well get used to it.

Having good integrity and being intentional are most important to me. There's a lot today that people do just to get the big bucks, or they compromise the values, what's important to you. And if it's important to build in the next generation, you want to be having good integrity and good character because you want them to continue that. So I always tell people, do things the correct way, even when no one's watching. That's especially important for little children, because you don't want them doing things just for other people to see.