Mississippi Literacy Association

10/17/2026

🌟📚 FEATURE FRIDAY | CELEBRATING MISSISSIPPI’S PROGRESS 📚🌟

This Feature Friday, the Mississippi Literacy Association is shining a light on Mississippi’s continued commitment to educational excellence and student achievement!

The Mississippi Department of Education has released 2025–2026 accountability grades, with 53.9% of schools and 50.7% of districts earning an A or B under the state’s new, higher accountability standards. These results represent more than percentages and letter grades. Behind every data point are scholars learning, educators teaching, leaders leading, families supporting, and communities investing in brighter futures.

Importantly, this year establishes a new baseline for school and district performance. Because the standards for earning accountability grades have changed, the 2025–2026 results should not be directly compared with previous years. As literacy leaders, we know that meaningful progress requires high expectations, evidence-based instruction, intentional intervention, strong leadership, and an unwavering commitment to every learner.
📈 Higher Standards.
🎯 Greater Accountability.
🏫 Stronger Schools.
📚 Stronger Readers.
✨ Brighter Futures.

Congratulations to Mississippi’s educators, scholars, families, schools, and districts as we continue the work of building a more literate Mississippi—together!

Celebrate. Inspire. Empower. Together.

10/16/2026

📚💙💛 THRIVING TOGETHER THURSDAY: BUILDING TEACHER CAPACITY
If we want to improve reading achievement, we must intentionally invest in the people who make powerful literacy instruction happen every day—our teachers.

Building teacher capacity is more than providing professional development. It means creating ongoing opportunities for educators to learn, collaborate, practice, receive feedback, reflect, and grow. When teachers deepen their knowledge and strengthen their instructional expertise, that growth reaches every scholar they serve.

💡 Professional learning builds knowledge.
🤝 Collaboration multiplies expertise.
📚 Strong instructional practices strengthen literacy.
🌱 Reflection and coaching cultivate teacher growth.
📈 Greater teacher capacity leads to stronger reading outcomes.

The goal is not simply to give teachers more to do. It is to equip them to do what matters most—with greater knowledge, confidence, precision, and impact.

✨ Equipped Teachers. Effective Instruction. Higher Outcomes.

Invest in teachers. Empower instruction. Elevate reading achievement. Because when we strengthen the teacher, we strengthen the classroom—and when we strengthen the classroom, we change reading trajectories and transform lives. 💙💛📖

10/14/2026

💡📚 Wisdom Wednesday: Advocacy for Literacy Equity

Literacy has the power to open doors—but equity ensures those doors are open for every learner. Advocacy means elevating voices, expanding access to high-quality instruction and resources, removing barriers, building meaningful partnerships, and creating opportunities for every reader to thrive.

When we advocate for literacy equity, we aren't simply teaching children to read—we are helping ensure that opportunity is not determined by circumstance.

Every learner. Every community. Every opportunity.
📖 Literacy equity is not a privilege. It is a right.

10/13/2026

📖✨ Teaching Tip Tuesday | Text Structures
Strong readers don't just understand what an author says—they recognize how the author organizes the information!

Teaching scholars to identify description, sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, and chronological order gives them a roadmap for making meaning from complex texts. 🧠

💡 This Week's Teaching Tip: Teach scholars to look for signal words, patterns, and organizational clues as they read. Then pair each structure with a graphic organizer to help make their thinking visible.

When scholars recognize the structure, they can better anticipate, organize, remember, and comprehend what they read.

🔎 Uncover the pattern. Unlock the meaning. Deepen comprehension.

10/13/2026

✨ Motivation Monday ✨
What we nurture today becomes the literacy legacy of tomorrow. 🌱 When we inspire readers, invest in educators, champion equity, and strengthen partnerships, we plant seeds that can transform entire communities.

📚 Plant ideas. Nurture potential. Grow opportunity. Cultivate equity. Harvest brighter futures.

Together, we’re growing a stronger, more literate Mississippi—one reader at a time. 💙💛

10/10/2026

Registration is open to the 55th Annual Mississippi Literacy Association Conference - Turn the Page: Transforming Literacy - One Page at a Time. This event is ideal for K-8 classroom teachers, academic coaches, and instructional leaders who are committed to enhancing literacy instruction across Mississippi. 🔹Register at nmec.msresaservices.com/events-page.

10/10/2026

10/09/2026

🏆📚 FEATURE FRIDAY | LITERACY CHAMPIONS IN ACTION! 📚🏆

This week, the Mississippi Literacy Association proudly shines the Feature Friday spotlight on Jackson Public Schools for receiving the 2025–2026 Richard M. Robinson Literacy Champion Award—a national honor presented by Scholastic in partnership with the Council of the Great City Schools recognizing progress in advancing literacy! 🌟

And at the heart of this recognition is Shirley Elementary School, selected to receive an incredible library transformation featuring thousands of new books and resources designed to give scholars even greater opportunities to READ. EXPLORE. GROW. ACHIEVE. 📖✨
This recognition is about more than an award. It celebrates what becomes possible when a school community makes literacy a priority—when educators champion readers, leaders invest in access, partners provide resources, and scholars are surrounded by opportunities to discover the power of books.

👏 Congratulations to Jackson Public Schools, Shirley Elementary School, and the educators and leaders whose commitment to literacy helped make this moment possible!
And thank you to Scholastic for investing in Mississippi's scholars and helping create spaces where reading, curiosity, exploration, and possibility can flourish.
💛 Literacy changes lives.
💙 Literacy champions create brighter futures.

Keep turning the page, JPS—Mississippi is celebrating with you! 🎉📚🏆

10/09/2026

📚🤝 THRIVING TOGETHER THURSDAY: CREATING LITERACY TEAMS

Improving reading proficiency is not the work of one teacher, one classroom, or one interventionist. Literacy is a shared responsibility—and our greatest impact happens when we work as a team. 💙💛

Strong literacy teams bring educators together around a common purpose: ensuring every scholar becomes a stronger reader, writer, thinker, and communicator.

When we combine our expertise, examine data, align instruction, share effective practices, and respond intentionally to scholar needs, we create a powerful cycle of improvement:
🤝 COLLABORATE around a shared vision.
📝 PLAN with purpose and precision.
📚 IMPLEMENT evidence-based literacy practices.
📊 MONITOR progress and adjust instruction.
🎯 GROW literacy and reading proficiency.
No single educator has to carry the literacy mission alone. Shared knowledge + Shared strategies + Shared responsibility = Greater reading success.

Strong Teams. Brighter Readers. Greater Possibilities.
Because when literacy becomes OUR work, every scholar has a greater opportunity to thrive!

10/07/2026

💡📚 Wisdom Wednesday: Building Community & Capacity

Professional learning becomes powerful when educators learn with and from one another. Sharing resources, planning collaboratively, practicing through role play, analyzing data, and opening our classrooms to peer observation transform individual expertise into collective capacity. 🤝✨

When we collaborate with purpose, we strengthen people, practice, progress, and possibilities.
Stronger educators. Stronger readers. Brighter futures. 💙💛