Jennifer Garner looked so different in her latest social media post, which saw the Alias star share adorable childhood photos from her early years growing up in Charleston, West Virginia.
Jennifer shared the post for Teacher Appreciation Week, alongside a touching caption that spoke to her love of reading and dancing as a child. See the sweet clip below…
Sweet snaps
“Never miss an opportunity to thank a teacher who shaped you. Teaching is hard!” she wrote. “I’m so lucky to have been taught by my lifelong friend Annyce McCann. And my lifelong mentor Nina Denton Pasinetti. Thank you, Mom McCann and Ms. D, I love you.”
In a clip discussing the incredible impact her mentors had on her, Jennifer shared a photo of herself as a young girl dressed in a pink ruffled dance uniform, looking completely unrecognizable from the star we know and love.
She explained that her dance teacher, Nina, “shaped my idea of integrity”, “discipline” and “connection to my own body and what athleticism is.”
© Instagram“And of course, that’s totally changed who I am in my career, because I’m not afraid of physicality,” she added.
In another photo from the clip, a teenage Jennifer wore a white dance costume with a high neckline as she pointed her leg at an incredible angle, sporting baby bangs and a wide smile.
Childhood heroes
© InstagramShe then paid tribute to her former librarian, Annyce, whom she named her “favorite teacher ever” and “loved so much I called her Mom McCann.”
“She totally understood my love of stories and books, and fed me one book after another,” the mother of three added. “She let me help in the library during lunch and after school and during breaks, and she let me help order new books and work the card catalog.”
“And she even published a little story that I had written,” Jennifer shared. “She published it herself, made it its own card for the card catalog and gave it a spot on the shelf in the school library.” Annyce then held up the aforementioned book, T. Bear’s Trip to Mars, sharing that the actress wrote it in the first grade.
Fighting for change
© Getty ImagesThe 53-year-old is a fierce education advocate and is fighting to save Head Start from Donald Trump’s proposal to defund the program, which supports almost 800,000 children in the US.
“There’s nothing more optimistic than reaching a kid when they’re young,” she told Today.
“We think of childcare as graham crackers and a nap and a wipe [of] the nose. That is not what we’re talking about here. These teachers, these professionals, these educators, they are brain architects. They are training these brains to become learners.”
© Getty ImagesShe added that rural children would bear the brunt of Head Start’s defunding, and asked lawmakers to “remember our rural communities, and to remember the rural children who do not have a voice.”
Jennifer shares her three kids Violet, 19, Fin, 16, and Samuel, 13, with her ex-husband, Ben Affleck. The couple were married for 10 years before they announced their separation in 2015.
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