Detroit teacher Tissua Franklin is Swiss Army knife of early education specialists
Tissua Franklin is the Swiss Army knife of early education specialists if there ever was one.
Not only does Franklin teach full-time kindergarten at Mark Twain School for Scholars in southwest Detroit, but she is the CEO of Purposeful Educations and School of Purpose, open since 2022. It's a small, privately owned day care/preschool in Detroit that emphasizes polite discipline, literacy, gardening, karate and general prep for kindergarten. (During a recent pop-in to the school, Franklin was caught dancing to the song "Baby Shark" with her students, ranging in age from 2 to 5.) Franklin’s gig at Mark Twain has allowed her to hire a full-time director and teacher, Sherri Robinson, a Child Development Associate (CDA), to run the School of Purpose.
Franklin published a book in January titled "100 Ways to Teach Your Child to Read." It opens with the line, “Parents are a child’s first teacher." One of Franklin’s main goals in tackling literacy issues in Detroit is enlisting parents, as much as possible, to aid in their children’s education. “I am seeing students at the kindergarten level already two years behind in their literacy," she says. "We need parents.”
The book is Franklin's way of screaming from the mountaintops to motivate a child’s caregiver to put words and letters in front of them as early as possible.
“Literacy starts in the womb,” Franklin says.
Franklin credits her grandmother for driving home the importance of education. She also paid for Franklin to go to private schools, an educational path that ultimately led her to Michigan State University.
During her years at MSU, Franklin did a year of student teaching in the late '90s in the Southfield Public Schools, where she found a firm and direct mentor in Susie Melamad. When she became a teacher, she applied Melamad’s style. “Her style worked," Franklin says. "My kids flourished.”
The lightbulb of entrepreneurship went off for Franklin when she was teaching at a local pastor’s kindergarten class.
“It occurred to me that if this church can run a kindergarten, why can’t I?”
Franklin believes all children need preschool, so Detroit youths can be equipped with the tools to "Read by Grade Three," the name of a piece of Michigan legislation that saw recent amendments to improve literacy through intervention rather than punishment. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says that establishing universal pre-K is one of her 2024 goals. Literacy is a mission for Franklin, who dreams of someday opening her own charter school to create a culture of education.
“I would do this right."
For more information, go to purposefuleducations.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit kindergarten teacher Tissua Franklin stresses early literacy