Sophia Strati’s desire to see her students become confident in their learning comes from a deeply personal place.
Strati, a second-grade teacher at Erskine Elementary School, focuses on the importance of reading to her students. Strati said that growing up, she was not the best reader, but she was surrounded by teachers who knew how to support her through her learning.
“I struggled with reading as a child,” Strati said. “A couple of my teachers were able to help me overcome that. … (They) helped me overcome that feeling of like, I am not necessarily reading at the same level as everyone else, but that’s OK.”
The walls of Strati’s classroom are filled with strategies and techniques designed to help her students become better readers and spellers.
“In the four years I’ve been here, we’ve really honed in on the Science of Reading,” Strati said.
Cheryle Gooding, another second-grade teacher at Erskine, had Strati as her student teacher at Erskine.
“She’s a strong teacher, especially for being so new,” Gooding said. “She has great classroom management, and she has great control over her class and understanding of the curriculum. She does a really good job of finding out what the kids need and accommodating them to meet their needs.
“She helps out with our literacy nights, and she’s very involved and stays after to work in the food pantry. She’s involved in lots of activities, not just at school but to help bring the community in.”
Strati knew she wanted to be a teacher at a young age. When Strati was in second grade, her little sister was born, and “I knew immediately that I wanted to work with kids,” she said.
Strati recalls countless sessions of reading with her sister and playing “school” together, which she said both helped her in her reading and clarified a career path into teaching.
Chris Chelli, the principal at Erskine Elementary, said Strati “does a lot to meet her students’ needs.”
“She’s just really a kind and caring teacher,” Chelli said. “Sophia fits in very well with her team. They are very collaborative, especially with our reading initiatives. She’s working along with our reading specialist and literacy coach to meet the needs of the students in that classroom and go over the interventions they need to be successful.”
Strati said the moments when concepts begin to “click” for her students are foremost among the highlights of her job.
“They finally understand a spelling pattern, or they finally understand the math problem, and they are able to do it on their own,” Strati said. “Just that look of, ‘I can do it myself. Thank you for the help, but I got this, and I know I got this.’ That look they get when they are ready to do it on their own is just so much fun, and I love it.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.