With a little extra effort and some encouragement from a mentor Newton High School’s Samaria Jones represents her school and the state as president of Educators Rising, the student organization that serves students enrolled in the Educator Prep program. But, with a high achieving student like Jones the high profile president’s job was just a stepping stone to her newest achievement as an ambassador for the national Educators Rising organization.
The pathway to the ambassador’s position was not one that Jones, a junior, had not necessarily planned for herself. Originally, Jones said she did not even want to enroll in the Educator Prep program. Now, as a national ambassador Jones finds herself in charge of Motivational Monday, a program where she sends out encouraging messages to members of the Educators Rising program across the nation on multiple social media platforms.
As a three-year member of the Educators Rising program Jones said she was reluctant, but the previous teacher of the program at Newton High School, Chafony Poole, convinced Jones that she was a good fit for Educator Prep and Educators Rising. Poole now teaches Educator Prep at Newton County High School and owns a tutoring service Fail Me Not.
“Truly at first it was because of Miss Poole,” Jones said. “At first I was like, I don’t think . . . um . . . I don’t know,” Jones said. “She really convinced me to do it. Then I liked it. It’s excellent. I really like doing it. I was the most resistant of all my classmates at first. I had my mind set I would never be a teacher, but when I started teaching kids at Fail Me Not, I really loved it. I felt like I was being a big part of someone’s life.”
Jones said she hopes to influence her students’ lives much as Poole has moved her life in a different direction by getting her into the Educator Prep program.
Once Jones was enrolled in the program, Poole said she saw something in Jones and encouraged her to run for state office. And from there, Poole encouraged her to apply for the ambassador’s position.
“She came to me as a ninth grader, and I saw something special in her from day one,” Poole said. “She was a high achiever, but she took initiative. A lot of students don’t take that initiative to go and do things beyond what is required, but she did.”
Poole said she noticed during classroom visits where Jones was working in the program’s teacher’s assistant component that Jones was not just helping, she was actually doing things a classroom teacher would do such as helping students complete assignments and reading to students.
Seeing Jones’s drive to go above and beyond what was required, Poole said she made a case for Jones to run for state office which required additional work on Jones behalf and divine intervention.
As Jones explains it, she had to write an essay about why she should be state president and present it at the state convention.
“I was so nervous,” she said. “But, thankfully the Lord did it. He did it for me.”
While serving as state president and the only national ambassador from Mississippi will keep her busy this year, Jones is already looking to the future as she contemplates studying at Howard University in the field of math and science secondary education. She said her future plans also include running her own tutoring service and possible teaching at the college level.
Though teaching and running her own business might sound like a challenge, Jones’s current teacher in the Educator Prep program at Newton, Cassandra Hardaway, also believes Jones is up for the challenge.
“She keeps me on track being a first year Ed Prep teacher” Hardaway said. “She’s amazing, enthusiastic, and dependable. She’s very busy, but she handles it well.” In addition to her representative positions with Educators Rising at the state and national level, Jones is a cheerleader and tutor at Fail Me Not.
