Meet Trimona Barron: Certified Teacher and TUTOR
My Credentials
- Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education
- Master's Degree in Education (with a concentration in Adult Education)
- Master's Degree in Business Administration
- Specialist Degree in Early Childhood Education
- T-6 Level Teaching Certificate from the GaPSC
My Teaching Experience
As a teacher with over a decade of teaching experience in public schools, I have taught every type of student from special education to gifted and accelerated. However, throughout my teaching career, I have always struggled with the politics of having to teach grade level standards to students who lacked the foundational skills needed to gain a full understanding of the standards. For example, having to teach students how to identify the main idea in a paragraph who struggle with reading it or having to teach students double-digit multiplication who still struggle with basic multiplication. Thus, as a result of the constraints and politics of teaching, I stepped out of the classroom after ten years, and decided to dedicate my time to helping children reach their full academic potential.
Business/ Educational Background
My mission after leaving the classroom was to teach students the skills they lacked without the time constraints and political barriers that I faced in the classroom. Thus, I opened TailorED Learning Center (TLC) and started an after-school tutoring and enrichment program. In my program, I was able to help my students with their daily homework and any grade level work they didn't understand, as well as push them further by making up for any lack in foundational skills they had experienced while in school. I was able to teach pre-K students sight words and how to count by fives and tens. I was also able to teach all my students their basic multiplication facts with automaticity, and even helped kindergarten and first graders learn their facts. In addition, I offered individual tutoring to students in my community who needed extra help with staying on track or just wanted to move ahead. My after-school program worked out so well, I extended it into a summer learning program where I continued to teach kids needed skills through fun learning activities!
Once schools were forced to close in March of 2020, due to COVID-19, I was forced to close my afterschool and summer learning programs. I then changed my business model to only offer individual tutoring as a way to still help children in my community, while staying safe and preventing the spread of COVID-19. As a result, I now offer individual tutoring, homeschooling services, and educational resources throughout the year, as well as virtual ZOOM classes during the summer!
My EDUCATIONAL "WHY"
In education there is always an extenuating circumstance that can prevent a student from learning, whether it be lack of time, teacher to student ratio, and/or daily interruptions. However, I have always found that the greatest barrier to student learning is a lack of foundational skills. For example, a student who struggles with phonics, phonological awareness, and/or fluency skills, will struggle to read until the lack of foundational skills is addressed. After reaching this realization as a teacher, once I had my own child, I started homeschooling her at the age of three to make sure she would never have a problem with basic foundational skills. Since she learned how to count to ten and recognize the letters of the alphabet at the age of one, when I started homeschooling her, I was able to focus on teaching her phonics, how to write her letters and numbers, and how to count pass ten. By the time she was four, I was teaching her phonological awareness, sight words, and how to count by fives and tens. As a result, before she started kindergarten, she already knew 115 of Fry's sight words, how to add and subtract, do word problems, and had already started reading! Since I have documented so much of my daughter's growth on TailorED Learning Center's Instagram page (@tailoredlearningcenter), I always get messages from parents asking for resources and tips on what I did to help her grow so much. Thus, between teaching in public schools and my after school and summer programs, homeschooling my daughter, and tutoring, I have used all of my experience in education to create tailored learning experiences and resources to help children grow!