A teacher’s aide at the Little Angel Pre School on Walkers Road in George Town, Sophia Mitchell or Carol as she is popularly known, loves working with children. What she loves about them the most is the innocent things they say or the little things they do.

“Sometimes when I’m having a bad day they would say something that would lift my spirit. Just like the other day I was in class and one of my students said to me ‘Miss Carol you are the ‘bestest’ teacher in the world.’ So I said “‘thanks but the word is best and the student said “you are still the ‘bestest’ of everybody”,’ It is things like that which makes all of this worthwhile,” she told The Jamaican in Cayman.

“Sometimes they’ll just come to you and hug you and tell you ‘Miss Carol I love you’. We get along good … they are my little peeps,” she said. “I’m sometimes amazed at what they have to say,” she added. She takes care of children ages three at the school teaching them to write their names, basic conversation skills, and how to reason among other things.

“By the following year they would have gone on to the class where they do more written work. So I have to start preparing them by the beginning of this next semester,” she said. Miss Mitchell started working at Little Angels five months ago but has been working with children on the Cayman Islands ever since she got here six years ago.

She was working with Tiny Tots for a number of years until Hurricane Ivan destroyed the building. She went into private tutoring for a while before starting work at Little Angels. “That is the only thing I ever wanted to do; work with children.

I love them so much; some of them call me mommy and I feel like they are my child. I’m a mother to them all,” she told The Jamaican in Cayman. A mother of three from Spaulding in Manchester, Jamaica, Miss Mitchell used to do volunteer work at pre-school and primary schools in her community back in Jamaica prior to coming here six years ago.

“Whenever I have the time I would go to these schools and help out, doing what I can do, so in a way you could say that I’ve been in child care for a long time,” she said. Miss Mitchell is a member of the New Testament Church of God in West Bay. She loves music of every genre. “If somebody knocks two pieces of sticks together Miss Carol will be rocking,” she said.

He favourite singer is Jamaican international star Sanchez, who recently visited the Island.