Jackson Free Press

Lydia Hall, a 19-year-old graduate of Madison Central High School, has been a volunteer teacher at an orphanage in El Salvador for the past five summers.

"I knew someone who had an organization down there, so I went one summer. I ended up falling in love with the teenage girls who were sold into prostitution and who had children," Hall says. "It hit me really hard because they weren't given opportunities like other people were given. I liked being down there. I liked getting to know them, and I liked trying to help them. I just kept going back."

Hall has five major goals:: to make a difference teaching, to live in El Salvador at some point, to be a foster parent, to raise children with Christian values and to live in New York City.

"I think that our generation, especially, is very focused on themselves ... Having the nicest things, having fame, finding love--that's all very self-centered," Hall says. "I wish I could make people see the people who don't get to focus on that stuff and are just focused on their day-to-day living. I wish more people wanted to help out, not just in other countries, but here in Mississippi, too."

"I found out last year that Mississippi has one of the lowest literacy rates." Hall says. The Mississippi Department of Education states that 52 percent of third-graders and 50 percent of eighth-graders read at or above grade level. Seventy-eight percent of the state's fourth-graders are below proficient in their reading skills. "(Many) newspapers are written at a fifth-grade reading level, and I think that is because there aren't enough teachers who are willing to work hard. A lot of people think that teaching is just an easy major to get."

Although Hall was born in Jackson, she has also lived in Indiana and Miami, returning to Madison with her family in 2007. "I love southern hospitality, but I also just love Jackson," Hall says. "I think that the buildings in downtown Jackson are so pretty ... I wish we could fix (the city) up some, but I love it. I love the kids here; the way that southern children are raised ... I love everything about Mississippi."

In the fall, Hall will be a freshman at the University of Mississippi, to which she received a full scholarship. She plans to major in education and English so she can be a ninth-grade English teacher.

Hall has also volunteered at the Mississippi Children's Museum where she was one of the original Learning Librarians who read to children at the museum. "I take a class at the Vocational Center called Teacher's Academy. We have been kind of student teaching in the elementary schools for the past two years. I spend a lot of my time working on stuff for that class, like learning how to write lesson plans and doing competitions for the organization that we work with."