It was 10 am on Wednesday, January 15th and a throng of “cheerleaders” from PAACT: Promise All Atlanta Children Thrive and GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Student, The College Football Playoff Foundation (CFPF), and United Way of Greater Atlanta squeezed into the lobby of Easterseals North Georgia Child Development Center. When given the all-clear, they moved stealthily down the hallway and crept into a colorful room filled with smiling Pre-K students. The kids watched, rapt, as their teacher, Patricia Shepherd, narrated a weather experiment. So engrossed was Shepherd in her explanation of storms that she kept right on teaching when this crowd of 15-plus strangers piled into her classroom.
What Shepherd would soon find out—through a big announcement by CFPF’s Margaret Frank—was that she’d been selected to receive an Early Childhood Champions Hall of Fame award. The recognition was based on the glowing recommendation of her school’s director.
Another happy shocker? This validation of Shepherd’s 18 years of creative, tireless early education came with a prize—$5,000 presented with a round of applause and burst of confetti. True to form, Shepherd handed the kitschy, oversized check over to her tiny students, who giggled and grinned as they gathered around their teacher for a photo.
This same morning, four other educators from various Atlanta child care programs received the same heartfelt surprise and responded with just as much shock. In total, 20 teachers received these $5,000 awards.
The awards came about due to the collective work of many longstanding partners, all led by PAACT. It began in 2022 when the Rotary Club of Atlanta, a partner in the $20 million Mayor’s PAACT Commitment, awarded 895 early educators with $500 Early Childhood Champion bonuses.
In the wake of this initiative’s success, and with Atlanta hosting the 2025 College Football National Championship game, the Rotary Club’s Randall Kirsch and Shan Cooper saw an opportunity to expand this recognition of early educators. With a connection from the office of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, Rotary and PAACT pitched an idea to the CFPF, which bestows awards to K-12 educators in each year’s host city. In Atlanta this year, they proposed, let’s award early educators, too. Once the CFPF agreed, another PAACT partner, the United Way of Greater Atlanta, matched the foundation’s $50,000 commitment.
And that’s how collective action resulted in a Hall of Fame windfall for 20 of our city’s early educators. One of these awardees was Katisha Gray.
Gray is a preschool teacher at Whitefoord Early Learning Academy located in East Atlanta. Her journey to early education began 17 years ago, after she enrolled her baby daughter in child care.
"When I dropped her off at daycare one time,” Gray recalls, “I heard the teacher saying, 'Baba.' And I'm like, ‘What? What is that?’ [My daughter] was able to say, ‘I want my bottle.’ And now they’re making her go backwards from what we’re teaching her at home. So, I was like, ‘Well, maybe I can [be a teacher].”
Gray's other child, a son, has deeply influenced her approach to teaching. He has an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a personalized plan designed to meet the specific needs of students with disabilities.
After being inspired by her experience with finding quality care for her own children, Gray entered the early education field with a passionate drive. She dedicates herself to being a perceptive, loving source of support for her students. There is no “baby talk” in her classroom and she goes above and beyond to plan engaging learning activities. When her creative projects require supplies, Gray often uses her own money to buy them.
“We did a long experiment when we talked about the body and how it works,” Gray says, recalling one of her purchases. She was so impatient to make her lesson come alive for her kids that “I went to the store and got Ziploc bags and straws. I could have waited, but it was just five dollars. So, I went and got it. Even the parents were amazed at what a straw and a plastic bag could do.”
The Early Childhood Champions Hall of Fame award recognizes this kind of dedication. It also highlights that early educators are underpaid for their crucial role in shaping our youngest learners' lives. In Georgia, child care workers earn a median wage of $11.71 per hour—two dollars less than the national average. This pay is significantly less than K-12 professionals.
So, like many of her peers, Gray struggles to provide for herself and her two kids. And yet, she still gives endlessly to her students and has no intention to change careers. She says she views her efforts as an investment in her students' futures. Each accomplishment, no matter how small, fills her heart.
“When I invest in them, I get rewarded by their light bulb moments,” said Gray. “Seeing them enjoy what I'm presenting is my reward.”
Concetta Reeves, another ECC Hall of Famer, hasn’t known anything but this kind of joy.
“When I was a little girl, my mom used to keep kids, so I was just around children all the time,” she recalls. “When I got out of high school, they opened a daycare center, [the Fun to Learn Child Care and Development Center].”
She joined her parents’ staff but she was no nepo baby. She had to endure an uncertain period as a “floater” before her persistence earned her a full-time position in her own classroom. 32 years later, and with her sister, Yvonne Reeves, now directing the school, Concetta is still as passionate as ever about her life’s work. She’s persisted through the deaths of her parents and her own health challenges because she knows the importance of her impact, both on the colleagues she mentors and her own students.
“It’s just the fact that they can’t help themselves, that they depend on you,” Reeves says. “So, in order for them to really grow, you’ve got to stay and be consistent with them. I love to see them learn new things and just to see their little faces, how they act when they get mad, or how they act when they’re happy. I mean, it’s just amazing. I’ve seen a lot of them take their first steps.”
As small businesses, child care programs often operate on paper-thin profit margins, limiting the ability of program directors to pay their employees a living wage. But educators like Patricia Shepherd, Katisha Gray, and Concetta Reeves remain in their field despite financial sacrifices. The existence of the Early Childhood Champions Hall of Fame award acknowledges that educators across the country are highly qualified, highly committed and deserve recognition.
They all keep teaching because they love their young learners; because they feel responsible for their futures. They keep at it, as Reeves simply puts it, because “We've been doing [child care] for years and we probably will never stop.”
Nevertheless, she goes on to say, “We are the beginning. So, with us being the beginning, we should be [paid] close to what [K-12 professionals] receive.”
When child care providers are unable to adequately compensate their essential workers—the dedicated teachers of our youngest Atlantans—it's essential that public and private partners act as a collective to support the critical care and foundation-building that takes place in the first five years of a child’s life.
Engineering the Hall of Fame awards took months. It involved the leveraging of relationships and the calling-in of favors. It meant dozens of meetings, phone calls, and emails. But this is how collective action works. And to support all our deserving early educators, more partners need to join this movement
