Pheron Russell

Teacher Mentorship Program

Educational Specialist in Administration and Supervision

Graduated, Fall 2022

Byram, MS

Pheron Russell, a proud native of Jackson and Byram, Mississippi, experienced both rural and urban education firsthand as a student. After earning her undergraduate degree, she joined Teach For America in 2014, serving as a 10th- and 12th-grade English teacher at Lakeside High School in Lake Village, Arkansas.

During her corps service, she was selected as a 2015 Education Policy Fellow at the University of Arkansas, where she studied the effectiveness of Arkansas’s ACT Aspire state test. Since then, Pheron has taught at Mississippi’s first charter school as a fifth-grade literacy teacher and founding cheerleading coach, and later at Crystal Springs Middle School as a sixth-grade language arts teacher. From 2019–2021, she coached first- and second-year TFA corps members in Jackson, Mississippi, as a teacher coach for the Greater Delta Region. In 2020, she earned her Master of Education from Belhaven University with a concentration in Curriculum and Instruction.

Pheron collaborated with colleague Hannah Bagwell to address teacher retention in Mississippi. Together, they created a mentorship initiative connecting novice teachers with veteran educators through intentional programming. The project emerged after their original student leadership initiative was halted due to lack of administrative support—an experience that taught Pheron the value of pivoting with purpose and extending grace when plans change.