From Leland, MS to Yale University
by Alex Melnick (MTC ‘17) & Meara Brown (Yale ‘25)
Meara Brown, Alex Melnick, & Shaun McDonough (left to right)
When Meara entered my class four years ago, she informed me she was going to do big things. She was going to be a lawyer, she was going to work in civil rights law, and she was going to be the first person from Leland High School to go to Harvard. Turns out, she was wrong.
She wouldn’t be going to Harvard. Instead, she would become the first to attend Yale.
Alex: Meara is also our school’s first Questbridge scholar and most likely the first to achieve a perfect score on her English and Reading ACT. To top off her accomplishments, she’s an AP and dual enrollment student and worked almost full-time through a pandemic. Meara was one of my very first students, someone whose siblings and cousins have been taught by myself and my husband. She’s a first-rate presentation maker, a self-described argumentative person, a sometimes procrastinator, and a completely average track and tennis member. That's to say: she’s almost a typical teenager. Almost. But not quite.
She is, after all, truly remarkable in a way almost never seen due to the educational inequity in public schools in our area. Actually, her achievements far surpass even the “high-performing” schools in the state. Over the past four years, she’s already shown up schools like Oxford High in the state Reading Fair, not to mention in her college acceptances and different awards.
But she’s just Meara to me, the same student I’ve taught for four years. The bookish one. The outspoken one, who hates group work, and writes great poetry. When she called me with the news, I honestly had to feign surprise. I’d known (and most importantly believed) that she would be going to an Ivy League since the moment I’d met her. You would know it too if you met her. She has that presence.
Meara: I’ve always figured that education is the only way out of my poverty-stricken community. It’s hard for us to escape the cycle of poverty. So, when I realized college would be my way out, I decided I would do well in school, and end the cycle of poverty in my family. It’s hard to find good-paying jobs in Leland. Take my family for instance. My mom makes a fine salary for maybe a two-person household. But she has four kids! That’s how it is in Leland. There’s usually one sole provider for the family with kids, and that person doesn’t even have a well-paying job. That’s what I see when I look at my life and the lives of my classmates’.
Alex: When Meara entered high school, I was just starting out teaching. She had more ideas of what to do in a classroom than I did, really. But that’s the thing. Kids are willing to give you the grace to figure it out. When a unit bombed, she just asked for a separate independent unit. (Yes, that was really her exact wording at 14 years old.) If a class went off the rails, she would finish her work early, so she could pull out a massive, multipound fantasy book I’ve gotten for her. Maybe it was my youth or my whacky teaching, but Meara gravitated towards me. She kept seeking me and many other Mississippi Teacher Corps teachers out, and kept asking for harder and more independent assignments. While most freshmen were trying to figure high school out, here she was pushing herself (and us for that matter) to perform at the highest level she could envision. Her teachers and I just were there to show her what could exist, and she would make it possible.
Meara: The reason why I was even able to get into Yale is my teachers. I had teachers that encouraged me, and I had teachers who gave me second chances. Ms. Melnick, you, and the other MTC teachers really helped me. It’s because of you I found Questbridge at all. You helped me find people who were going through similar things, other low-income students who had dreams of Ivy Leagues too. I really had a lot of encouragement. My support system was very small, but it was very strong. I mean, I come from a teen mother, I have three other siblings, and I live in a low-income neighborhood and attend a Title 1 school. I was able to do it despite the odds because of my support.
Alex: One of my biggest lucky breaks was being placed at Leland High School as the upperclassmen teacher. It put me in the right place at the right time to help really amazing children access college. For many of these kids, they were among the first in their families to graduate high school much less than attend a four-year university. There are thousands of these stories across the Delta, and all over the state of Mississippi. The reason I think I got such a lucky break was that I got to do something. Being suddenly thrust into the Delta, I and other MTC teachers were able to create an ad hoc network of care for first-generation college students seeking out help with financial aid, admissions, or anything else their families weren’t able to help with at the time.
Meara: I know my school is a low-income school. I didn’t have the same school experience as the majority of students who attend an Ivy League. We just don’t have the resources available. Take your class for example--- we didn’t have any air conditioning for three years. How were we supposed to learn? How can we focus on test-taking without any air? It’s a different world. I wasn’t able to ask or access a lot of “traditional” resources on how to apply to an Ivy League school. It can be like being trapped in a small scope, or a limited view.
Alex: Whenever we had a guest speaker or I was helping seniors apply for colleges after school, I always made sure Meara and her classmates were there. It started out as repaying my debt to the many mentors who’ve helped me and turned into something akin to parental pride: the feeling of wanting something better than you had for the people who’ve been put in charge of. When I was a senior, I had to navigate college admissions myself, and remember how stressed and overwhelmed the experience made me feel. Subconsciously and then intentionally, I vowed to myself that the group of students I worked with from 9th to 12th grade would be ready, regardless of first-generation status, poverty, or the fact that we were in Delta and so many viewed that as a barrier to higher education entry.
Meara: When people look at students like myself, there’s this unspoken expectation to ‘stop’ when you get to a certain level. To be happy with what little you achieve. When I was in 7th grade, I made a 20 on the ACT. So many people in my life told me to stop, to anticipate getting into any college in Mississippi. I wanted more. If I listened to them, I would have stunted my growth as a person. This is how my peers are treated too. If they achieve a certain score on their ACT, so many people want them to stop. It’s because we are low-income.
Alex: Far from being a burden, being from the Delta is my students’ superpower. It makes them resilient, heirs to a rich culture of music, civil rights heroes, and regular folks who made due in insurmountable circumstances. It makes them honest about our country, having experienced the worst of the country while being simultaneously promised in school, by loved ones, by what they see and read every day they could inherit the best of it. It builds big dreams that are so important to make come true--- and teachers can help, even if we’re building the plane as it leaves the runway. We get to imagine and work with students like Meara as we figure out a way to create a world where those dreams are true.
Everything Meara has done over the past four years (arguably maybe beyond that) has been in service of her goals. Every hour of ACT practice, late nights of study, and conversation with me picking and parsing out what she has and has not been exposed to in the world led her to be one of the very few in the Delta, much less Mississippi, to be accepted into an Ivy League.
Meara: I want to pursue a double major if possible at Yale. I plan to eventually study law, and so I want to study political science and psychology with a focus on forensics and criminal activity. I want to be surrounded by people who take their education seriously.
There’s so much injustice on a daily basis. I want to be the person who at least helps stop that. I want to be someone who prosecutes criminals like George Zimmerman or someone who helps a person who went to jail for a possession charge and is now serving 25 years something as small as that. It ignites a spark in me; I have the ability to be the voice for my community. I want people to know I come from Leland. They should know I come from Mississippi. People look at me and my community and know we face a lot of poverty and problems, but people like me can be anything they want to be. Coming from Leland doesn’t stop me. People from Mississippi can do it. Kids from low-income schools can do it. We can do it, and I want people to see and know that. Especially people who look like me and are from places like me.