September 13, 2024
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Alexandria Drake |
Katie Hayes |
Bre'Ana Marshall |
Tracee Thompson |
Teach Plus, a national teacher leadership organization, has selected a diverse group of 24 educators from around Mississippi for its 2024-2025 Policy Fellowship. The 6th cohort of Policy Fellows will focus on a range of issues during the upcoming year, including college and career readiness, equitable school funding, and the science of reading.
Jackson Public Schools will be well-represented with four members of the 6th cohort hailing from JPS schools. They are:
- Alexandria Drake, JPS-Tougaloo Early College High School (College & Career Readiness Working Group)
- Katie Hayes, Obama Magnet Elementary School (Equitable Funding Working Group)
- Bre'Ana Marshall, Northwest Middle School (Data Systems Working Group)
- Tracee Thompson, Jim Hill High School (Science of Reading Working Group)
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Kristin Scott |
In addition to the new Policy Fellows, JPS instructional coach Kristin Scott will serve as a Teach Plus Lead Senior Fellow. In this role, she will be working with our newest Senior Fellows to assist them with their working group goals. She will also help plan Capitol Day in early March.
“Over the past year, we’ve talked to many community members, policymakers, and educators. In these conversations, we’ve identified a strong need to better prepare our students in Mississippi for post-secondary success. We want our students to be better readers because it’ll make them more successful in school and in life. We want our schools to be properly funded to ensure our students have access to the resources they need. And we want to make sure that we’re collecting the data that’s essential to making informed decisions from our classrooms all the way to the governor’s office. We know that this is a multi-year goal and we are committed to building our teacher leaders’ expertise in this and subsequent cohorts in achieving this important policy objective,” said Sanford Johnson, Executive Director of Teach Plus Mississippi.
The 2024-2025 Teach Plus Mississippi Policy Fellowship cohort includes a member of the State Superintendent’s Teacher Advisory Council, five National Board Certified Teachers, and a three-time winner of the Mississippi High School Newspaper Adviser of the Year award. Over half of the Fellows come from middle school or high school, which reflects the focus on college and career readiness. Two-thirds of the cohort are teachers of color, which is reflective of the diversity of the state and its students. The Fellows hail from 12 different school districts from the Coast, the Delta, college towns, and several communities in between. Some of the Fellows serve as department chairs, while others coach speech and debate, volleyball, and even pickleball.
About Teach Plus
Teach Plus is dedicated to the mission of empowering excellent, experienced, and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that advance equity, opportunity, and student success. In pursuing our mission, Teach Plus is guided by our Student Opportunity Mandate: All students should have the opportunity to achieve their potential in an education system defined by its commitment to equity, its responsiveness to individual needs, and its ability to prepare students for postsecondary success. Since 2009, Teach Plus has developed thousands of teacher leaders across the country to exercise their leadership in shaping education policy and improving teaching and learning for students.
