Cosandra Stewart, a first-grade teacher at Sherman Avenue had a lot of teaching experience before coming to Vicksburg.

Stewart received her Bachelor’s degree in 1998 from Alcorn State University and began working at Webster Elementary School in Yazoo City for the next 13 years.

Stewart moved to Vicksburg in 2007, because she and her husband bought a house in Vicksburg. She commuted to Yazoo City through 2008, but the price of gas was too much. She decided that she wanted to work closer to home, and she interviewed at Sherman Avenue, however, Webster Elementary would not let her out of her contract.

“I had to work one more year in Yazoo,” Stewart said. She came back and interviewed for the same position a year later and was hired.

Stewart received her Master’s degree in 2009 and her Specialist degree in 2011 from Alcorn State.

Stewart said she was a lead teacher at Webster Elementary, and when she came to Sherman Avenue, she became the chairperson for first grade.

“I’m kind of in charge of planning and if there’s any first-grade related problem, I go to the principal,” she said.

Stewart loves teaching first grade.

“I don’t want to leave. First grade just seems like my home. I don’t think I could deal with the bigger kids,” she said.

Stewart said she enjoys how much the younger-aged children take in information.

“Little kids soak it up, and big kids already have their own opinions,” she said.

At one point, she thought she wanted to be a nurse. However, her grandmother became ill and she had a hard time dealing with the hospital and taking care of her. She was also having trouble in school at the time.

“I was a struggling student. I went straight into first grade and did not know how to read,” she said.

She said she was immediately discounted by administrators and teachers and was placed in the lower group of students.

“Somehow I started learning and it was in second grade that I realized teachers were meant to teach students,” she said.

Stewart said her second grade teacher at Mileston Elementary

School in Tchula, Miss., Barbara Moore, was an inspiration to her.

“She would say to me, “You’re going to learn to read. You will read in this class,” she said.

“She was the one that instilled in me a love of reading. She always told me that every child can learn, just not all at the same time and not at the same pace,” Stewart said.

Moore said she stayed in touch with Stewart’s family because she taught her nephew and her sister.

“She was always a very very nice little girl and she was very interested in learning,” Moore said.

She said she came from a supportive family and they did the best they could to be educated.

Stewart said she hopes to receive her doctorate degree during her last five years of teaching, so that she can retire at that level.

“I’m hoping Alcorn will get a doctorate program by then,” she said.

Her husband, Troy Stewart, is a math teacher at Vicksburg High School and basketball and golf coach.

They have a son named Teagan who is 6 years old, and a daughter named Trystan who is 22 months old.