Valerie N. Gervais

Center Director, Children of the World Preschool

Born and raised in South St.Pete. Graduated from Boca Ciega 2002. I started my career at Bayfront Child Development Center in February 2005, having never worked with kids before. I enjoyed my time there and fell in love with working with children. I left Bayfront and went to work at a small private school – this is where I met my first project challenge case worker. This is also where I participated in my first behavior intervention.

In January 2014 I left this school and started a job as a three-year-old teacher assistant at UMCM St.Marks now the Learning Empowered Campus, this is where I learned about trauma informed care. This my whole idea of early childhood education changed and this is where I learned the term Trauma Informed Care. I learned children with behaviors could just be struggling with self-regulation. I learned children will learn more and retain more when they feel heard, loved and respected.

During my journey with Learning Empowered I have obtained my Associates in Education and my Bachelors in Human Services –Community and Youth Development, I am endorsed by the Florida Association for Infant Mental Health. Continued training helps me to further my ability to help the youth and community.

I am a single mom who worked full time and was a full time student while raising them. I have spent countless hours volunteering to help the youth in my community. I feel the more parents are involved the further the children will go in life- Parents are a child’s first teacher. I hope my own children saw my struggle and learned from it. I believe if you tell a child “They can” enough times then they start to believe they can. It doesn’t matter where your journey started you can always change where it will end. I have always wanted to help and make a change and I am glad I have the opportunity to do so within this organization.

Contact: Directorcwp@learning-empowered.org