Where in Mississippi did you grow up? What was your own high school experience like? I went to Pontotoc City High School in Pontotoc, Mississippi. It is a small town right in between Oxford, where Ole Miss is located, and Tupelo, where Elvis is from. I graduated with about 180 students. I enjoyed both athletics and academics. I knew I always wanted to become a teacher because I knew I wanted to make an impact on students’ lives. I also …
During the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, over 100 students, Mississippi-based teachers, and tutors from Yale, the University of Virginia, Harvard, and Scripps gathered virtually to work on AP Physics and AP Computer Science, as well as to learn about developing the study skills, resilience, and grit needed to excel academically and later in life.
On January 21, 2021, Global Teaching Project hosted a virtual event with Dr. Edward Ryan, Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Global Infectious Diseases at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Well over 100 participants joined the Zoom session, and GTP high school students from rural Mississippi, as always, asked excellent questions. A recording of our program is here. Demeria Moore, a student at McAdams High School in Attala County, introduced Dr. Ryan, who addressed the latest developments on COVID-19, …
A key element of Global Teaching Project’s blended learning model—which employs multiple means to engage students and facilitate learning—is the extensive tutoring provided by college STEM majors from leading universities around the country, such as Yale, the University of Virginia, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Those tutors work with students at the Global Teaching Project’s residential programs, held for students several times a year at Mississippi universities (and virtually during the pandemic). The college tutors also provide instruction by video conference, …
Happy New Year! A year ago, no one could foresee the trials that 2020 brought. However, the extraordinary response of our students, teachers, tutors, and administrators was entirely predictable, because their character already had been evident. We are extremely proud of their hard work and commitment. We cannot choose our circumstances, but we can choose how to respond. It is natural to become disheartened in the face of adversity. To summon the resolve to overcome that adversity is the essence …
Today is Thanksgiving. Grade school pageants tend to associate the holiday with Pilgrims and Indigenous Peoples, but it was Abraham Lincoln who first designated the fourth Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving. Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation was issued on October 3, 1863, a time when, as the document acknowledged, the nation was convulsed by “a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity.” Just three months earlier, the war’s bloodiest battle, Gettysburg, had been fought, and its most consequential campaign …
According to new data from the College Board, the entity that administers Advanced Placement exams, the Global Teaching Project’s Advanced STEM Access Program stands out favorably both in Mississippi and nationally in two critical respects: Continued Growth: Amidst the pandemic, schools across the country are limiting their academic programs and reducing their AP offerings, with the sharpest declines in areas of greatest need. Yet the Global Teaching Project is expanding educational opportunity by sharply increasing the number of students served. Nationally, fewer schools are offering …
Fewer than 0.3% of Mississippi public high school students even attempt the challenge of the AP® Physics 1 exam. Among all 38 Advanced Placement® subjects, AP Physics 1 has the lowest average score and the lowest percentage of students who achieve a “qualifying” score—the minimum required to earn college credit. AJ Tutor and Rylee Chisholm, currently seniors at South Pontotoc (MS) High School, took on that challenge—during a pandemic—and excelled. Both not only earned qualifying scores on the AP Physics …
Dear Friends of the Global Teaching Project: We are pleased to report that, thanks to the resolve of our dedicated students and committed educators, the Advanced STEM Access Program has achieved record enrollment in the 2020-21 school year. The Advanced STEM Access Program, now in its fourth year, provides promising students from rural Mississippi communities access to challenging courses they need to achieve their full potential, but which their schools otherwise had not offered, due to both limited resources and …
Today is Election Day. Every election presents different issues, but the primary purpose of an election is, or at least should be, always the same—to create a better future for ourselves and others. The political process is one way of helping achieve that better future, in which all lives are valued, and everyone has the opportunity to live happy, productive lives as they see fit. Yet politics is not the only way in which we can act to create a …