A Dayton-area education startup is making moves at a downtown commercial property.
Michelle Person and her partner purchased a building in downtown Dayton for commercial leasing in 2014. A vacancy on their ground floor brought an idea inspired by Person’s disenchantment with the area’s education system.
With her extensive background in education, Person decided to create Just Like Me Presents, a space for local children to be educated in a way both developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive.
Just Like Me Presents currently provides supplemental teaching materials and a condensed curriculum to parents, teachers and organizations. Person’s goal for 2022 is to open a 30-student class for grades K-2 in her downtown space later this fall.
The micro-school will work outside of the traditional public-school requirements, focusing on appropriate childhood development, expectations and activities. Person is passionate about teaching a fair view of history and intentionally presenting imagery of people of all colors and backgrounds.
Person said the area’s education system — which she says focuses on rushed development, “absurd” measurements of growth and “arbitrary” benchmarks — is not meeting the ideal learning environment for young children.
Person estimates 20% of children thrive in the traditional school environment while 80% will struggle, leaving many children feeling anxious as they watch peers keep up with expected development.
“Children are anxious to please and when you’re constantly measuring a child’s progress and they don’t hit benchmarks, it disheartens them,” Person said.
Person wants to provide a positive teaching environment for all children within the K-5 age group that will encourage children to desire and enjoy further education.
“The content being put in front of our children is not content that is reflective of them (and their culture),” Person said. “That content (does not) make them feel proud of where they come from and makes them think that they can’t aspire to be anything other than what they see on a daily base around them. And that adds to the achievement gap that black and brown students achieve at far lower levels than their white peers.”
The opening of the school would be contingent on financing. Person launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month with a goal of $5,200 for final development of the school’s “Meanwhile in Africa” curriculum.
If the startup meets its goal and opens this fall as a non-chartered tax-exempt school, Person will teach the class with the help of student teachers at Central State and Wilberforce universities.
Just Like Me Presents
Founded: 2020
Owner: Michelle Person
Employees: 1
Website: https://justlikemepresents.com/
Service: Micro-education school and supplemental studies materials provider
