Envision Children: Always Learning
Starting Envision Children was secondary to Sheryl McConney’s primary goal of wanting to find something to do for her kids during the summer. “As a single parent with two kids, ages five and three, I looked around the Greater Cincinnati area and I couldn’t find any great programs that were fun, interactive, educational and affordable to families.”
Before founding Envision Children, Sheryl was tapped in to a program in Chicago founded by educational pioneer Marva Collins.
Collins founded the Westside Preparatory School in 1975 and it became an educational and commercial success. Collins created her low-cost private school specifically to teach the low income Black children whom the Chicago Public School System had labeled as “learning disabled.” Collins had the data to prove that her students were able to overcome obstacles of learning via her teaching methods. This included appropriately decreasing behavioral disturbances that allowed students to flourish.
“Every child deserves a chance to learn, to be successful and achieve academic excellence.”
— Sheryl McClung McConney, Founder and First Executive Director of Envision Children
“She made us feel like we were great somebodies. She instilled us with a lot of self confidence that, as black and brown students, we needed. She filled a void I don’t think our schools could have.”
—Jessica Gassett (Howard University ‘17), a Former Student of Ms. McConney)
The results Collins was seeking for her students and the methodology of how to get those results struck a nerve with Sheryl. She approached Collins about importing her teachings into a program in the Greater Cincinnati area. At the time of this conversation, President Bush had unveiled his “No Child Left Behind (NCLB)” initiative and there was money behind that program that was being invested through the each state Department of Education.
Sheryl received financial support for tutoring through a for-profit company she had established in 1999 called the Envision Learning Center (ELC). After the turn of the century and up to late 2008, the ELC grew into the second largest tutoring program in the city of Cincinnati, but then funding dried up and the NCLB ended. Many children had benefited greatly from the ELC’s work. Sheryl knew that while federal dollars were no longer available there was still an enormous need for affordable academic assistance in the region.
The concept and founding of Envision Children came out of Sheryl’s desire to keep working with families who had a desire to have their own children participate in educational programs that were hands-on, interactive and fun. “Our students need to be part of educational programs which allow them to experience learning as opposed to just reading about it in a book or on the computer.”