A treat for Mississippi readers: The work of MSMS students in Columbus has been featured in The Atlantic, a national literary and cultural magazine with over 400,000 subscribers.

Mississippi schools come in #49 in many national rankings. Read these essays and poems by high school students from Columbus, Mississippi. Then tell the folks who make up the rankings that they need a different algorithm.

By Deborah Fallows

Jim and I returned to Columbus, Mississippi, recently to see how development in the Golden Triangle was progressing, and to visit one of our favorite schools, The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. The MSMS is a two-year public residential school for students  of all races, ethnic groups, and economic backgrounds from all over Mississippi. You see a glimpse of the school and some of its students at work in the science labs at the end of this Atlantic video produced this past fall.

Don’t be fooled by the name of the school, with its emphasis on math and science. The school is equally impressive in its humanities programs. We wrote about MSMS here and featured some of the essays from students last year here. We have more for you this year.

Emma Richardson teaches the creative writing class at MSMS, and the essays and poems here are all from her students. This is the first of two collections.

As Jim and I have traveled the country over the last three years and have seen many, many schools, we have come to appreciate the deep dedication and generosity of some special teachers. They are pouring their minds, talents, and hearts into their work, and they are changing the fortunes of their students one life at a time. Hats off to Emma Richardson and to Thomas Easterling, the English teacher at MSMS who first found us and invited us to come to Columbus.

To read the full article and the student essays, click here to go to The Atlantic‘s website.