Today, a couple of local and state politicians got a front row seat in the classroom.
Florence City Councilwoman Octavia Williams Blake along with someone with representative tom rice took a tour of Southside Middle School in Florence.
The goal was to get an up-close look at different Teach for America classrooms.
The program started in South Carolina in 2011 where there were at the time 30 teachers in the Pee Dee and Orangeburg areas.
There are now over 220 corps members teaching throughout the Pee Dee, Orangeburg, and Lowcountry regions, with over 100 teachers in the Pee Dee region alone.
“We focus a lot on urban education…which is nothing wrong by sheer population, but rural education sometimes gets pushed under the rug and it’s really, really important to me that my students have seen such incredible things in my classroom and that all these students are seen as bright and talented,” said Matt Delaurence, teacher at Southside Middle.
This is the school’s second year involved with Teach for America.
