AFTER several years in Jamaica’s public education system, 32-year-old Tiffany Cope took a chance on a small tutoring business. She could not have known then that one child would change the direction of her career and ultimately shape the work she is doing today.

Cope’s path to the classroom began much earlier. Growing up in the rural farming community of Hancock in Glengoffe, St Catherine, she saw the influence of education close to home. Teaching ran in the family, and two of her siblings would eventually enter the profession as well.

For Cope, however, the attraction was also deeply personal. The classroom offered a space where she could bring her creativity to the way children learn and develop.

“Teaching gives me the freedom to be creative,” she said. “I can take a lesson and find different ways to make it connect with a child. That is what I enjoy most.”

Tiffany Cope, founder of Thinking Educational Services.

Cope began her teaching career in 2016 at Buff Bay Primary, where she spent several years before moving to St Richard’s Primary School and continuing to hone her skills as an educator. While teaching full-time she launched Thinking Educational Services as a small tutoring programme, believing that children thrive in smaller learning environments where they can receive more personalised attention.

It was during those early years that one student would change the direction of her career. When Izayah Henry enrolled at Thinking Educational Services he had been diagnosed with autism. “He was very bright, but he wasn’t able to express himself,” she recalled.

Through patient guidance, tailored teaching strategies and consistent support, Izayah gradually became more confident in communicating.

“I saw tremendous improvement,” she said. “His mother recommended me to another parent, and before long I had several students to assist. That’s when I decided to intentionally create a special education classroom.”

That experience deepened Cope’s focus on children with diverse learning needs. In 2022, six years after beginning her teaching career, she took a leap of faith and made Thinking Educational Services her full-time focus.

Starting with just seven students, the institution now serves approximately 70, providing an inclusive learning environment and specialised support for children of varying abilities, including those with autism and other intellectual disabilities.

As the school grew, Cope recognised that her own knowledge needed to grow with it. She went on to complete a master’s degree in special education, strengthening her ability to provide the specialised support her students needed.

Her work has since gained recognition beyond the classroom. Earlier this year she received the Governor General’s Achievement Award for Leadership, which recognised her work through Thinking Educational Services, her mentorship of fellow educators, and her service to the community.

“It really means that I’m doing something worth doing,” Cope said. “It shows that I’m making an impact in my community. But this impact doesn’t belong to me — it belongs to all those that I serve.”

Even as her work expanded, Cope continued looking for ways to strengthen the support she could offer her students. That pursuit eventually led her to the Creative Language-Based Learning (CLBL) programme, after the mother of one of her students introduced her to the initiative. Through CLBL, Cope gained evidence-based strategies for working with children with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences, particularly in literacy. The training gave her new tools to identify where children were struggling and adapt her approach to their individual needs.

“After the training I had someone assigned to mentor me who visited the school and made sure I understood how to implement the programme properly,” she explained. “I really got a lot of support.”

Today, Cope continues to apply those techniques in her classroom, helping children build the literacy and communication skills they need to progress academically and in their everyday lives. But her experience has also shown her how much more is needed to ensure children across Jamaica can access this kind of specialised support.

“We need the funding,” she said. “We need the resources, the teaching materials, and the human capacity to fulfil that mandate.”

She would also like to see greater support for educators working with children with learning differences, particularly those on the autism spectrum, so they have the skills and resources to respond effectively to the needs in their classrooms.

It is a need that Malta is helping CLBL to address. Through its The Good You Give campaign, Malta has donated $300,000 to CLBL, helping it equip more educators with evidence-based literacy strategies and extend specialised support to more children.

Cope believes every child deserves the opportunity to learn in an environment that recognises their individual strengths rather than defining them by their differences.

“It’s not something to fear,” she said of children with learning differences. “We need to understand what they need, use the right strategies, and love them just as we would any other child, because they deserve the same care and education.”

For her, that belief now extends beyond the children in her own classroom. She hopes the work she is doing can help shape how educators and parents see children who learn differently, and what they believe those children can achieve.

“I want to leave a legacy of creativity, love for the profession, and genuine care for children,” she said.