Students dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki pants moved from table to table at the Dot Cooper Kelly Storm Shelter in Tupelo, Miss., on April 18, 2024. The students scribbled in small notepads as they spoke with industry professionals during the Fillmore Center’s first career fair.
Barbers, attorneys, restaurant workers, trucking companies and construction workers stood at tables flanking the brick wall of the building. Innovative and Alternative Programs Director Tanisha Smith stood near a table listening with one group. The fair was the realization of a vision Smith had for Filmore, which houses Tupelo’s Structured Day Program.
“I have been very intentional about who I’m bringing in (to the career fair) because I talk to students and ask what they are going to do when they graduate, and they say they will just get a job,” Smith said.
The administrator distinctly remembers the first time she walked the halls of the alternative school nine years ago, two weeks before the school year ended. At the time, she was shadowing then-principal Larry Harmon. As Smith observed the school in action, she began envisioning what it could become.
“That was the best thing I could have done,” Smith told the Mississippi Free Press on April 16. “I saw things I wanted to change and how we could make it better. That next year I just took off, and it’s just gotten better every year.”
Smith began introducing her ideas immediately. She initiated a program called Take Kids On, which paired teachers with students and provided the children with a building advocate. As the program progressed, the faculty noticed students naturally found “their” person.
“We’ve noticed that after the first few weeks of a child being here, students tend to gravitate to one teacher or another,” SDP Biology teacher Jaclyn Robinson told the Mississippi Free Press on April 16. “That teacher works with those children, makes sure they speak to them every day and does check-ins with them. (They) make sure that child knows individually that they are cared about and that there is somebody actively involved in how they’re doing,