We are very pleased to announce that Mississippi educator Nicole Roberson has been named as the inaugural Executive Director of the Mississippi Public School Consortium for Educational Access. The Consortium, now in its fifth year, was formed by several Mississippi public school districts to work with the Global Teaching Project to implement the Advanced STEM Access Program, which provides promising high school students from rural communities access to advanced STEM courses they need to achieve their full potential.  The Consortium and the Global Teaching Project currently offer Advanced Placement STEM courses at approximately 30 high schools. Ms. Roberson, a Mississippi …

On June 30, 2021, Mississippi State’s baseball team won the national championship. The Bulldogs earned the school’s first national title in any team sport with a 9-0 victory over two-time recent champion Vanderbilt in the decisive final game of the College World Series. MSU’s baseball team deserves congratulations.  Even more so, they deserve emulation—they demonstrated what it takes to succeed, and we should seek to learn from their example. The NCAA baseball championship tournament consists of three rounds, in which the nation’s best 64 teams compete.  The winners of 16 “Regionals” of four teams each play each other in 8 …

The Global Teaching Project provides promising high school students from rural, high-poverty communities access to advanced STEM courses they need to achieve their full potential, but which their schools otherwise could not provide. Our students have been selected for our program because they have demonstrated a high aptitude and strong work ethic.  Yet those students, though quite smart, often have gaps in their substantive foundations.  Also, COVID greatly disrupted school schedules and instruction in the past year, leading to severe learning losses that put students even further behind. To strengthen our students’ substantive foundations and prepare them for the rigor …

Earlier this week, a team from the Washington bureau of cable news network News Nation came to the town of Marks in the Mississippi Delta at the invitation of the Global Teaching Project.  The News Nation report that aired was prompted in part by our essay on Marks and the ongoing struggle for Civil Rights and educational equity. The focus of the News Nation story was the need to expand and improve broadband internet in rural, high-poverty communities, a key step in addressing educational disparities and, given pending federal legislation, an appropriate topic for White House correspondent Allison Harris, who …

The Global Teaching Project was proud to host a Virtual Student Recognition Program on March 9, 2021 to recognize the hard work and dedication of students who have shown extraordinary commitment in the face of unprecedented challenges. 

Teaching is at the heart of the Global Teaching Project’s mission. Teacher shortages across the country prevent students from accessing advanced coursework, which, in turn, impedes their ability to pursue, and complete, a college education.  To address that growing crisis, the Global Teaching Project provides promising high school students in rural communities access to advanced STEM courses needed to achieve their full potential, but which their schools otherwise could not offer. Supervisory Instructors—experienced, in-state, AP-certified teachers—are critical to the Global Teaching Project’s Advanced STEM Access Program.  Supervisory Instructors provide synchronous and asynchronous instruction, lead university-based residential instructional programs, create and administer …

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.

A key element of the 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, often multiple times per week, to students throughout the year as part of our schools’ regularly scheduled classes. Yale …

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 of heroism, as history has amply demonstrated. In 1834, not far from where I write this in Maryland, a young …

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 AP courses this year—AP Physics 1 and AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) offerings have declined 5.1% and 16.1%, respectively.  In …

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 1 exam, they also were among the very few students statewide who achieved top results on the test. AJ scored …