Meet Our 2021-22 GTP Teaching Assistants

The Global Teaching Project’s extraordinary Teaching Assistants are a critical, and unique, component of our blended learning model. The Teaching Assistants—Science majors from leading universities—provide substantive instruction for our students, and much more: the Teaching Assistants also are exemplars of achievement, and emissaries from the broader world beyond the rural communities we serve.

The Global Teaching Project’s blended learning model employs multiple means to engage students and facilitate learning—including both in-person and synchronous remote instruction; physical textbooks and learning materials; extensive online resources; teacher training; technology for students and classrooms; and residential instructional programs at Mississippi universities throughout the year.

Our Teaching Assistants are integral to every component of our blended learning model. Each participating school is assigned a Teaching Assistant, who provides instruction by video conference—typically multiple times per week—throughout the academic year as part of our schools’ regularly scheduled classes. Teaching Assistants also work in-person with students at the Global Teaching Project’s university-based instructional programs, and serve as peer mentors to students navigating the challenges of rigorous high school courses, as well as the college admissions process.

Each Teaching Assistant is a Science major from a leading university—including Columbia, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Michigan, Mississippi State, MIT, Ole Miss, Penn, Rhodes, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Virginia, and Yale, among others. Our Teaching Assistants share a common focus on advanced Science education, but also have widely diverse backgrounds and geographical origins—they come from the Deep South, Appalachia, New England, the Northeast, Midwest, and West, and they reside in rural areas, suburbs, and major cities. Also, many of our Teaching Assistants have strong ties beyond the U.S.—they include numerous immigrants or members of families who recently immigrated from China, Egypt, India, Korea, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

This year’s group of Teaching Assistants is our largest yet—36 remarkable young people from 11 universities work with classes in AP Physics 1, AP Biology, and AP Computer Science Principles at our 28 schools. Our 2021-22 Teaching Assistants bring a wide range of talent and experience to our program, and truly are among our nation’s most outstanding young people. We are honored to have them on our team, and they are among the many reasons we are very grateful this Thanksgiving.

Please take a moment to get to know this year’s Teaching Assistants.