Growing up in Harlem, Kyler Morris remembered “Guys hanging out at the corner, selling drugs, catcalling women. At one point, I thought to myself, ‘I didn’t want this to be my environment.’”
It was an environment in need of change. For Kyler, that change starts in the classroom. Today, she is transform the odds for her community as a math teacher at Harlem’s Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy schools.
From Math Tutor To Math Teacher
The first person in her immediate family to graduate college, Kyler started her journey at HCZ as a student advocate in the Promise Academy I afterschool program. Then, she became a math tutor at Promise Academy.
After making an impact as a tutor, Kyler was asked by Promise Academy I Middle School principal Kashif Hameed to become a seventh-grade math teacher at the school. So, Kyler took him up on his offer. It was a good thing she did: in Kyler’s first year, 95 percent of her students passed their New York State exams.