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| Profile of the Month - January 2006 | Jessica Wysopal |
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Jessica Wysopal, MTC Class of 2005, is finishing her first year teaching science at Simmons High School in Hollandale. Jess graduated from Magna Cum Laude from Wilson College with a degree in Environmental Sciences. “Jess has been doing a great job,” says Ben Guest, the Program Manager for the Teacher Corps. “She worked for a year as a substitute teacher before coming Mississippi. I think that experience really helped her, because if you are a successful substitute teacher you can definitely be successful as a regular classroom teacher.” |
“Motivating the students at Simmons is the biggest challenge,” says Jess. “Sometimes I feel that I have to trick them into learning the material.” “One of the best things about teaching,” says Jess, “is designing a successful lesson. I love the challenge of trying a lesson out, refining it, and tailoring it to my personality.” Before Teacher Corps Jess served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa. Jess was an agricultural extension agent. “Socially there are a lot of similarities between the people who I served with in Peace Corps and my classmates in Teacher Corps,” says Jess. The Mississippi Teacher Corps is the most competitive alternate-route teaching program in the country. It is a two-year program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in critical-shortage areas in the Mississippi Delta, in exchange for a full scholarship for a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Mississippi. The program was founded in 1989 by Amy Gutman, a Harvard University graduate student, and Dr. Andy Mullins, then Special Assistant to the State Superintendent of Education. Since 1989 more than 300 participants, reaching an estimated 60,000 students, have taught in critical-needs school districts as part of the Mississippi Teacher Corps. |
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