Kisha Fifer, who teaches pre-kindergarten at the Chambliss Center for Children, will be present Tuesday when U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is scheduled to visit the center and read to Fifer's students.Kisha Fifer teaches at Chambliss Center for Children, where she gets 3- and 4-year-olds ready for kindergarten - also known as "big school."
On Tuesday, Fifer will get some help from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, who'll read children's stories to Fifer's students.
"[Duncan] is going to read 'Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed' with an iPad," Chambliss Center spokeswoman Gloria Miller said. "Then Mayor Berke is going to read 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear [What Do You See?]' on an iPad."
Duncan, who's making stops in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee on his fifth annual "back-to-school" bus tour, also will hold a 6 p.m. town hall meeting on early learning in the Chambliss Center's gymnasium. He plans to exchange ideas with about 100 parents, teachers and stakeholders on what works best in early learning programs, a U.S. Department of Education statement said.
"We're really excited," Fifer said. "I don't know that [the students] know the importance, or how big it is. But they know he's coming."
Duncan decided to visit the Chambliss Center, Miller said, partly because he saw "Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert," an HBO documentary that aired in March and featured a Chattanooga-area single mother of three. Gilbert's son is in Fifer's pre-K class.
She also said the Chambliss Center's president and CEO, Phil Acord, is longtime friends with Libby Doggett, the federal deputy assistant secretary of education for policy and early learning. And the center runs a day-care program for teachers' kids at Normal Park Museum Magnet School, whose principal, Jill Levine, is a U.S. Department of Education principal ambassador fellow.
The Chambliss Center cares for more than 650 children through its children's shelter, off-site day-care programs and its 24-hour child-care services that are available 365 days a year. The center traces its history back to 1872, when it was set up as an orphanage.
Duncan's bus tour starts Monday in Atlanta, where he will join first lady Michelle Obama at Booker T. Washington High School, once the only Atlanta public high school to admit black students, for a "prep rally" focusing on the importance of completing school and pursuing higher education.
"Traveling through places that represent the cradle of America's civil rights effort, the tour will focus on important work being done to close gaps of opportunity that many young Americans face," said a U.S. Department of Education statement.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.