Filmmaker Kyra Knox set out to explore the impacts of financial security on preschool teachers in her latest documentary. It’s a story she hopes will inspire a greater push to boost the incomes of these workers, who often earn low wages despite the role they play in child development.
“The Hands That Shape Tomorrow,” follows staff members at the Gordon Literacy Center in Coatesville who received an extra monthly stipend as part of an 18-month experimental program. To Knox, who directed the film, witnessing the effects of the program on the well-being of the educators and students was enlightening.
The average annual salary for Pennsylvania childcare workers in 2024 was $29,500, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. That’s well below a living wage for an individual in Pennsylvania, which MIT’s Living Wage Calculator estimates to be $48,500.
“I was ignorant to the fact of how little they got paid,” Knox said. “There were several times during these interviews that I cried, because I was feeling for these early child care teachers. It was heartbreaking.”
The guaranteed income program, formally known as the Thriving Providers Project, provides an extra $500 in unrestricted funds to educators each month. It was sponsored by Vanguard and the Public Health Management Corp, a nonprofit health and human services agency that serves Pennsylvania and Delaware. Preliminary results from 2024 show it increases the ability for educators to pay for their basic needs and to reinvest in their classrooms.
“Everybody is buying houses, getting brand new cars, having a family and a dog and a cat and it’s like … I don’t get paid enough to have that,” teacher Allison Crothers says in the documentary’s trailer. “It was hard. Through the guaranteed initiative, we learned that there is a better world out there.”
Executive producers Laquana Cooke and Jeremy McCool, both professors at West Chester University, were approached by People’s Media Fund to lead the project in February 2025. They were familiar with Knox’s documentary, “Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia,” which won three awards at the 2023 Philadelphia Film Festival. They were confident Knox would be the best director for the film.
“I’m not in the business of exploiting other people,” Knox said. “The educators were so open. We had tears, but we also had laughter. This isn’t just sadness and education and facts, there’s fun, too. We really wanted to make sure that this wasn’t trauma-based.”
Provided Image/JTWO Productions
‘The Hands That Shape Tomorrow’ examines the financial security of preschool teachers at the Gordon Early Literacy Center in Coatesville.
The film crew sat in on the preschool last June, near the end of the guaranteed income program’s length. They saw and heard how much the program had transformed the educators’ personal and professional lives.
Trinityann Grove, a child development assistant at Gordon, told Knox that the money she saved from the stipends allowed her to purchase a house and hire in-home health care for her sick mother. Renee Talley, a child development specialist, said she was able to use the money to buy supplies for her classroom.
“That’s another level of reciprocity that a lot of people are not seeing with these educators,” Cooke said. “Kyra tells a story that’s underlying in a way that makes it visible to people and makes them feel the reality of it. That’s what I love about the documentary.”
The first screening takes place at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Regal Theater in Downingtown. Two additional screenings are slated for March 4 at the Uptown Knauer Performing Arts Center in West Chester and March 23 at the Philadelphia Film Society Center. Each screening is free and includes a panel discussion with filmmakers, educators and others afterward.
“I pray that when people see this, they really advocate for these early childhood educators, because they are going to work every single day, putting their own money into these classrooms and giving their heart to these kids,” Knox said. “I hope the audience takes away hope that we’re building a better future, not just for their early child care educators, but also the kids.”
