Oxford High School Alumna Returns Home to Intern with the Mississippi Teacher Corps

First-year teacher, Kristy Sanchez, poses with summer school intern, Anna Samonds, in the teacher’s lounge of Holly Springs High School.

I think I will forever be known as the “bread intern,” but I learned a lot more than how to make bread this summer.

Although I go to college out-of-state, I grew up in Oxford, Mississippi-- a privileged piece of a state I saw as poor, backwards, and frustratingly behind the times. It wasn’t until I left for college that I began to appreciate what’s beautiful about Mississippi: our people, our friendliness, our music, our literature, our nature, I could go on. All of this culminated in a desire to come back and teach here once I graduate so I decided to gain a little insight into the teaching profession through this internship.

I went through the Oxford Public School District, and I thought I was prepared for what I would see at Holly Springs High School. I was wrong. As Robin DiAngelo says, “if I am not aware of the barriers you face, then I won’t see them, much less be motivated to remove them” (White Fragility, xiii). I thought I was aware of the obstacles Mississippians face because I am one. I know people in this state are stuck in the cyclical nature of poverty and disenfranchisement. I know we don’t have much of a voice. But I know all of this on a very surface level. I did not know what it was like to pull kids out of class to meet with their case works from Child Protective Services, to not be able to keep children’s medicine because there isn’t a school nurse, or to meet children capable of so much who have been made to believe they are capable of so little and know that there is almost nothing I can do about it.

One day I said to one of the first-year teachers, Mr. Quentin Gilmore, “I just want them all to succeed so badly” and he said something to the effect of, “I know you do, but you can’t make them and not all of them will.” 

Before this internship, I thought I wanted to be a teacher in Mississippi. I know it now. Nothing will get better if people don’t invest in this state, especially Mississippians. Impacts will not be long lasting if that investment is short-term. You can’t parachute in, fix a place, and then leave. Instead, you must create a culture of caring, helping, and making things better, which is why I hope to move to a different area of Mississippi next year and do everything in my power to make a difference, small as it may be.

Anna Samonds

Centre College ‘20