Welcome to Know Better, Do Better Pennsylvania

The poet Maya Angelou once said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." This quote sums up everything we do in life, our relationships, our jobs even our being ourselves. As an English teacher, who has worked predominantly with youth that are in state care, this quote resonates with me and is the driving force for everything I do with my students. As a person who has grown up and now lives in communities with high poverty levels and sees how it affects our children this has become the driving force behind this initiative.

I was born and raised in Aliquippa, Beaver County and raised my children there. I am old enough to remember when the town was booming and then the steel mills shut down and everyone who could get out did. My family didn't. I love my hometown and when I moved in 2015, it was more to work on me than to abandon my home, the home where my son still lives. I moved to rural Forest County and accidentally got involved in politics. I also got into teaching as a substitute in the region and then as a teacher at Taylor Diversion Programs a school for at risk youth. I taught for four and a half years and I love my kiddos, all of them. In 2021 I moved to Oil City to foster. None of those communities are the same yet they each have some of the same needs, just like all of Pennsylvania, the main one being a better way for our young people.

During the last four years I started pestering politicians, candidates and judges on behalf of the youth I taught then in July, two children from my hometown were shot within 24 hours of one another. The second victim was the younger brother of one of my former students that we had lost to a hit and run driver. I had enough. I had enough of kids dying, of kids slinging drugs to provide for themselves, enough of people thinking the "hood is going to hood." I was done and that is when the idea of this site was born. Love and righteous anger can be powerful tools, but only if combined with others. Please help me help our children. Our future is dark without them.