Learning in Mississippi

Our first day of sitting in on the elementary school was the day after Columbus Day. In the first classroom I helped out in, third grade, they had a worksheet exercise about Christopher Columbus, and they discussed their answers as a class when they were all finished. Among common questions about Christopher Columbus was one that asked if Columbus treated the native people of the New World nicely. Every single student answered "yes," and when the teacher was going over the answers for the class, she didn't correct them. Christopher Columbus, while the discoverer of the New World, has become a controversial character in American history because he was known to have mistreated and enslaved Native Americans in the early days of New World expansion. So my question is this: did the teacher simply not know, or purposefully avoid the topic so closely related to civil rights issues of the 60s? 

Our focus in this service trip was to be immersed in the issues of race and the Mississippi education system. Mississippi received failing grades from national reports on their education system. We also met an employee of the Excel tutoring center who is a senior in high school forced to go to Community College before moving on to a larger 4-year university because she feels as though her school hasn't prepared her for a university. Segregation may not be legal, but race still seems to be a huge issue in their community, and civil rights units aren't mandated for history classes. Segregation still exists under the cover of private institutions like a private school and a "members only" swimming pool. One of the Excel center board members is a white woman married to a black man, and she said that she is fully accepted in neither black or white communities because mixed relationships are not a thing in Calhoun. 

We spent our first two days in Calhoun, Mississippi touring a sweet potato farm, cotton farm, Oxford (home of Ole Miss) and some local establishments. This seemed to be meant to prepare us by giving us an idea of the system that our hosts were trying to break. We got a glimpse of the farming and manufacturing business, the future of some of the Calhoun Elementary students, but also a glimpse of Ole Miss, a place that the students at Calhoun talked about with starry eyes. 

Our week in Mississippi proved to be extremely educational and rewarding. We bonded a lot as a group, but each and every one of us also made a really special connection with the kids we were working with. While it was tough to stand back and know that tutoring for 3 days won't really make a huge impact in the lives of those kids, it was humbling to have learned so much about their community, and to realize how lucky we are to have the ability to go to such an incredible university. 

-Maria Watson