Many states across the country have felt the impact of a nationwide teacher shortage. Specifically, the state of Mississippi has experienced a shortage of certified agricultural education teachers. Unfortunately, during a time, a novel virus (Coronavirus or COVID-19) swept the entire world and shook the academic world to its core. Like the majority, educators were encouraged to adopt a variety of approaches to better flow with the changes in their “normal” routines. Many researchers have suggested that teachers are leaving education due to little resources, recognition, and high job demands, which correlates to poor job satisfaction and symptoms of burnout. The COVID- 19 pandemic is a potential factor in the teacher retention rates. This study observes levels of job satisfaction and burnout among Mississippi agricultural education teachers. As well as considering the COVID-19 pandemic as an element to these levels as well.

After a long struggle, the State of Mississippi founded and funded the Industrial Institute and College in 1884. The school, located in Columbus, Mississippi, was the first state-supported institution of higher education for women in the United States, and it quickly became a model for similar schools in many other states. The Industrial Institute and College was distinguished from other women’s colleges in the nineteenth century by the fact that its graduates were expected to be fully prepared to support themselves. This curriculum required students to complete coursework in both liberal arts and vocational training. There was much conflict and controversy between factions that wanted the school to focus exclusively on either vocational training or liberal studies. Pauline Van de Graaf Orr served as Mistress of English from 1884-1913. Under her leadership, the Department of English set a high standard for its students. While there was considerable attrition among the students, many of whom were as young as fifteen and most of whom had no adequate secondary preparation, the Industrial Institute and College also graduated students, such as Blanche Colton Williams and Rosa Peebles, who went on to distinguished academic careers. Frances Ormond Jones Gaither was the best fiction writer the school graduated. After finding some success as a writer of children’s books in the 1930s, Gaither wrote a trilogy of novels about the Old South in the 1940s. Follow the Drinking Gourd (1941) follows the establishment and development of the Hurricane Plantation in Alabama. The Red Cock Crows (1944) addresses the then-unexplored topic of a slave revolt in antebellum Mississippi. In Double Muscadine (1949), a best-seller, Gaither explores the causes and consequences of miscegenation.

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)

This doctoral thesis deals with Panola County, a rural county in northwestern Mississippi. This historical-comparative study provides insight into the various social, economic, and political factors which have effected the development and diversity of education and schools in its two distinct school systems existing above and below the county's Tallahatchie River. Books, interviews, letters, newspapers, school records, state documents, United States census reports, the Mississippi Official and Statistical Register, Biennial Reports, school financial reports, school board minutes, and other local, state, and federal sources were scrutinized to determine these changes within the county. Based on an analysis of the information, starting in the 1830s, both sections of the county became resentful over a battle regarding the site of the county's seat and courthouse. Because of this dispute, resentment and bitterness developed between residents north and south of the river which resulted in producing diverse educational methodology, school growth, curricula, and school advertising. Because of the isolationism of the north portion of the county, residents refused, or were unable, to attract new industry which would increase their tax base to support the schools. During racial integration in the late 1960s the county's southern school district was provided the opportunity to co-operate with federal officials, black and white civic leaders, and community residents to form a more progressive school system. South Panola, like North Panola, initially did not desire integration, but by 1970 knew co-operation between all parties involved was necessary, and this decision aided the southern district in obtaining additional federal funding to make it one of the best school districts in the state. White residents in North Panola, refused to form a co-operative scheme between blacks, whites, and the federal government and chose instead to support the creation of private schools, further causing an environment leading to poor educational leadership, corruption, and the near disintegration of the school district by the 1990s / Educational Studies / D.Ed. (History of Education)