Kayla Lewis-Harrison, 46, is Southwest Louisiana-born and raised.

Aa a graduate from LaGrange Senior High School and McNeese State University, giving back to the community that raised her is a life mission.

She aims to play a part in building a more fruitful community through teaching the youth. “Education helps the community by shaping a better society to live in by knowing and respecting rights, law and regulations,” she explained.

This is vital, as a lack of proper schooling is a main contributing factor to wide-spread hardships. “Communities with high rates of education completion have lower crime, better overall health and civic involvement… a lack of access to education is considered the root of poverty.”

Lewis-Harrison has been teaching for seventeen years. For the past eleven, she has been a second grade Cambridge teacher at Lake Charles Charter Academy.

A Cambridge teacher differentiates learning to meet the needs of all students, she said. “We also demonstrate effective uses of digital technologies to support teaching and learning… We make effective use of formative and summative assessment to support the student’s learning and monitor levels of achievement and attainment.”

Using annual data, the school decided which teachers, Kindergarten through eight, will be placed in the Cambridge program.

She is also a team lead amongst the school’s second grade teachers, and is a sponsor for Pep Squad and the Chargette Dance Team

Before joining the team at LCCA, she taught second grade at Combre Fondel Elementary and English Language Arts at Sacred Heart Catholic School.

In a full circle moment, she was inspired to become a teacher by her own second grade teacher, Clwo Moffett. “She was smart and beautiful with a caring heart.”

This inspiration was solidified while she was in college. She went to school to earn a Bachelor of Science with a minor in Family and Child Studies, but settled into a career in education while working as a substitute teacher.

She is motivated by her passion to promote growth in her students. “What I enjoy about education is the ability to nurture young minds and inspire them to have self-confidence required for them to succeed in school and life.”

She does this by raising the bar. “My philosophy as an educator is to hold students to high expectations and teach them that learning goes beyond the classroom.”

Through the years, her students have taught her empathy and brought her joy. “My students have shown me how to love unconditionally… Their sense of humor and love is indescribable.”

To maintain a healthy work-life balance, Lewis-Harrison lives by the mantra “one day at a time.”

“Never carry situations over to the next day, because every day is a new one,” she said. “Do your best every day that you step foot into the classroom.”