The Kosciusko-Attala Career Tech Center Teacher Academy program is on a mission to create quality, driven teachers. When these teachers find jobs locally, it only serves as icing on the cake.
The program’s first home-grown success story came to fruition when Quintavious Mosley was hired by Long Creek Elementary as a kindergarten teacher.
Teacher Academy is available to Kosciusko and Attala County students in grades 10-12 who have a desire to teach as a future career. The two-year program usually includes 10-15 students per year.
Joy Trehern has instructed the Teacher Academy program for the past decade. She said students initially learn about classroom management and safety. Then, they travel to work in local public schools as a teaching assistants for one or two days each week. By seeking out students who want a teaching career, training them and giving them work experience, watching them continue their education, and then seeing them hired in local schools, the Teacher Academy is quite literally helping the community grow its own teachers.
CTC Counselor Tracy Hardy said Trehern has always wanted the community to be able to do this, and now she has proven that it can be done.
“Mrs. Trehern has always said that we are growing our own teachers. Now we can see that's exactly what she has done. She has one former student who is now a teacher and four more that are on their way to be teachers very soon,” said Hardy.
This year, Tessa Horne is taking over instructing the Teacher Academy. Horn taught at Kosciusko Junior High School for the past 14 years and also worked in Durant and Canton public school districts. In fact, she also learned under Trehern when she taught at Central Holmes Christian School. She said students in their first year of teacher academy will start out as teaching assistants for lower grades and work their way up to higher grades. If they return for their second year of the program, Horn will give them the opportunity to work with classes in at the age-level they would like to eventually teach.
Horn is excited about getting students to break out of their shells. She said students can be reserved and quiet, but when they get field experience in a classroom, their true personalities come out.
“Kids can bring the personality out of anybody,” she said.
Hardy said that by the time a local student reaches fourth or fifth grade, they likely have had a Teacher Academy assistant in one of their classrooms. Some students have been inspired by that and decided to join Teacher Academy themselves when they reached high school. Hardy said this cycle is crucial because it is continually giving back to the community.
“To me, those students want to give back more to the community because they've been in the entire process. They didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘I'm going to be a teacher, but I don't really know anything.’ They know the whole process, and they see how our Teacher Academy students affect the lives of those fourth and fifth graders or even kindergarteners later on,” Hardy said.
Mosley, a McAdams High School graduate, began Teacher Academy when he was in tenth grade under Trehern’s leadership. After graduating high school, he attended Holmes Community College, and went on to receive his degree in education from Mississippi University for Women. Since then, he has returned to Attala County to begin his career, living out his dream of teaching.
Quintavious Mosley, a Teacher Academy graduate, pursued his degree and returned to the Attala County School District as a teacher at Long Creek Elementary School.
Submitted photo.
Mosley credited Teacher Academy for giving him invaluable experience working with local students. He said the program helped him experience what it is like to actually teach children, and he took pride in being a teacher that made material fun for students.
He also said that Teacher Academy showed him that teaching is not an easy job, and helped grow his appreciation for the profession.
“There was a learning curve for me when I realized that teachers do a lot more than I ever thought they did,” he said.
In Teacher Academy, Mosley learned that all students learn differently, and it is important for them to receive hands-on, interactive instruction.
“My thing was not to just teach by paperwork. Be sure you interact with the kids and do stuff with them because they enjoy hands-on learning,” Mosley told The Star-Herald. “You’ve got to be able to be flexible with your teaching because what works for one student might not work for another. You have to learn how to be able to be a jack of all trades.”
The biggest challenge for Mosley is finding creative ways to engage students who may not have much interest in learning. He said certain topics and subjects aren’t the most interesting to some students, so he is constantly researching to find alternative ways to improve pique their interest and improve their learning.
Mosley’s favorite part of teaching is seeing his students retain information that he taught. When he was doing a student-teaching internship in Caledonia, parents of students regularly saw him in town and updated him on knowledge their children retained from his lessons. He hopes to continue this with his new role at Long Creek Elementary.
Mosley encourages students who may want to pursue a teaching career to join the CTC Teacher Academy.
“The program is very rewarding and very interesting. Whether future students are interested in teaching or just want to be able to experience working with children more, Teacher Academy will help them be able to reach their goals. It is a great experience to learn how to relate to and instruct children,” he said.
Former instructor Trehern is proud of Mosley and the other students on track to becoming teachers, and Horn says Mosley serves as a positive role model for Teacher Academy students who come after him.
“It’s really exciting to see Quintavious come back and get hired in the district that he went to school in, so now he's giving back to his community,” said Trehern. “I have several others that came through who are also in the process of getting their teaching degree. One is actually about to start their student teaching. The exciting thing is that they went through with it and completed the process.”
Mosley said having locally-grown teachers return to the community is a real positive.
“With [Mosley] coming back and teaching here, it makes his craft more meaningful to the kids who are in the program,” she said. “They can see that if they stay the course, that can be them one day.”
