RAMP, Inc.

Helen Johnson

My name is Helen Philyaw-Johnson.  I was born and raised in Philadelphia PA and relocated to Pittsburgh, PA after graduation from Little Flower High School.

I am a single mother of two, a daughter age 23 who is graduating in May from CCAC for Criminal Justice and a son, age 10 who is currently a fifth grader in Moss Side Middle School.

I have been employed in the medical field by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center since November of 1979 working in three major departments; Department of Internal Medicine with Bruce Dixon, M.D., Director of Allegheny County Health Department, Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute with Thomas E. Starzl, M.D., the Pioneer of Liver and Pancreas Transplantation Program, and
presently in the Department of Transcription.

In the past, I have served my East End Community of Pittsburgh with the Greater Pittsburgh Literary Council tutoring adults to enable them to receive their GED with a 2/3 success rate.

My passion has always been communicating and interacting with children, so when the opportunity was presented to me to become a part of theRAMP Tutoring Program, I could not resist.  It gives me great joy to work in the capacity as tutor/secretary in this much needed program.

My future plans would be to return to school for education/counseling so that I may make more of an impact on our future generations.

Epryl King

Monroeville became my home when I was three.  Now, I am 34 years old and teach in the same school where I once attended right here in Monroeville.  I have wanted to better my community since I was young.  While teaching was one way to help me do that, more still needed to be done.

I went back to get my Master of Education from Gannon University and am currently working toward completion of a Doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

While in my studies, I became aware of disparities between groups of students within our community.  I felt compelled to address these by trying to raise the bar in education.  Many students are affected by achievement gaps and the consequences of these gaps over time have persisted.  I wanted to change that.

The root causes of these educational disparities are broad and reach into many different environments, and are therefore very complex.  My goal is to raise academic achievement for underperforming groups of children so they, too, can experience the promise of our nation.