Students coming from the Delta do have a story to tell and their background can be a valuable asset in their contributions to society.
Four students — Nickalus Jones, Yasmine Malone, Vaniccia Dawson and Tyler Yarbrough — expressed those sentiments when they came home and led a college readiness workshop at their old stomping ground Clarksdale High School, where they graduated from in 2017, last week. The goal was to give high school students an insight the four college sophomores did not have when they were at CHS.
There was a networking workshop, building a resume workshop and a workshop to write a personal statement. A panel of CHS alumni currently enrolled in college talked about their experiences and gave advice the first day.
Jones, a broadcast journalism and integrated marketing communications major at Ole Miss, graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA and earned honors with distinction. He started as a nursing major until working at a hospital and said getting out and experiencing something is the only way to know what works for a person.
He said, when discussing resumes, it is important to have three to five references, noting he always includes Josephine Rhymes from the Tri-County Workforce Alliance program, which is graduated from.
“We created an activity to help the students get in touch with their story and really understand how unique it was,” Jones said. “We started by giving them a little information about our personal statements. Some of us even read ours. It was really good and also emotional for us to read some of the personal statements because the seniors really took it seriously. They really put a lot of work into their personal statements.”
While there are unique stories to tell, Jones acknowledged issues in the Delta, including the fact that the Clarksdale Municipal School District received an F accountability grade with the Mississippi Department of Education.
“I think one thing Clarksdale is going to have to do whether it’s in the community or school system is we just need better leaders,” he said. “I feel like a lot of the leaders that we have in our school system and this town in general are not doing it for what they should be doing it.”
Malone, a public policy major with a minor in journalism at Ole Miss, graduated with a 4.0 GPA and a 26 on the ACT. She said students were better able to understand who they were and purpose at the end of the week.
Some of the activities she said helped students included building a resume and asking for an internship in an email with a proper subject line, purpose and contact information.
“Even though we went through what we went through and grew up the way we’ve grown up, there’s a lot of value in that,” Malone said.
“Students were emotional in writing their stories. For that, I am just so grateful. They got to be emotional and honest in a way I don’t think they’ve been able to do.”
Dawson, a bio premed major at Alcorn State University, graduated with a 3.87 GPA and a 24 on the ACT.
“With the personal statements, we emphasized how their story coming from the Delta is unique to them,” she said. “Although we do come from the same place, we do have different struggles and adversity that we face. So we made sure we stress this is what a personal statement is.”
Yarbrough, a public policy and leadership major at Ole Miss, graduated with a 4.12 GPA and was the salutatorian. He was the recipient of the Stamps Scholarship at Ole Miss, which is the most esteemed scholarship offered at the university. He was one of 10 students in the class of 2021 to receive the scholarship.
“We want students to understand that their personal story has the ability to change the Mississippi Delta,” he said. “Throughout this week, we instilled within the students that their story has already shown the world that they are problem solvers, and change agents, contrary to what the many people will tell them. We learned that most live in single parents homes with siblings, and how as kids they had to mature, address problems, and in some cases, they have put their mental health to the side to navigate their lives, all issues kids shouldn’t ever have to deal with. The youth of Clarksdale and the Mississippi Delta are our hidden jewels and they need to understand that.
“Our community needs to understand that. Their stories have not been highlighted on a national level and are often over looked on a local and state level. These problems have been reinforced telling them that they’re not capable of anything with the state constantly underfunding our schools all while the students see the degradation of the school buildings, teacher shortages and a slew of other problems that the schools face. When kids value, and embrace their personal stories they can accomplish anything. We want to bring that home to them while also giving them the skills to be competitive when going to college and in the workforce. From learning how to write emails, conduct an interview, ACT prep, to connecting their personal story to what they want to do in life, I’m confident that the students will change the Delta for the better but also be competent leaders in whatever they do. We plan on expanding on our mission that stemmed for the workshop to make that a reality.”
CHS assistant principal Shawanda Shaw thanked the students for coming and giving something back.
“It means a lot and it says a lot about what Clarksdale High School means to the community and what it means to the students that have been here,” she said. “One of the things that we pride ourselves on is a working relationship with our students. So when they’re able to come back and give back, it says a lot about what we have actually done with those kids. The students that were actually coming back this year to provide remediation in-house support to those seniors, they were able to reach them on a different level that we were not able to hone in on. It says a lot when they are just taking it from a different angle.”
CHS seniors expressed appreciation to the college students for coming back.
“By them coming to talk to us, it’s very influential and it gave us a different perspective on why we should go to college, what things we need to do and how we can use our past experiences to use it as a passion for us and be successful in life,” said Kaitleen Noah, who plans to attend Coahoma Community College, then Ole Miss and major in biology with concentration in medicine to become a dermatologist.
Antwan Wheeler is thinking about attending Holmes Community College and majoring in biology. He played football for the Wildcats and is not sure if he will continue his career.
“They showed us ways we can get in the school we want to get in,” he said. “If I want to go to Ole Miss and I don’t meet the requirements for the ACT score and all that, there’s plenty of different ways that you can get into a school or you could use a personal statement or anything.”
Cameron Matthews, who also played football for the Wildcats, will be focusing on academics and majoring in business and management to be an entrepreneur. He hopes to attend Alcorn State University.
He hopes for the community to come together and increase the standards of education.
“It’s always good to see a group of black students and former high school people just get together and talk about college,” he said.
“It motivates me because every day I look and I see killing and I see all these bad things. I see students from our community just going out and doing big things. That kind of motivates me. I want to be just like them or even better so we can all be on the same level and raise our youngest up.”
The four college sophomores and three CHS seniors all plan to participate in the college readiness workshop in future years and involve other schools in the community.
For more information, email Jones at ntjones@go.olemiss.edu, Malone at ymalone@go.olemiss.edu, Dawson at vdawson@students.alcorn.edu or Yarbrough at tyarbrou@go.olemiss.edu.
