Detroit – Last week, more than 500 K-12 Detroit students started a three-week virtual summer enrichment program at Teach For America’s (TFA) Detroit Summer Learning Institute (DSLI): Fall Warm Up. 

DSLI: Fall Warm Up is a free three-week program that provides flexible academic support to families and students in grades K-12. The K-3 program focuses on literacy and offers families three 30-minute phonics instruction lessons each week, as well as workshops personalized for students using the nationally recognized Springboard Collaborative curriculum. Every family that participates in the K-3 program receives an at-home reading kit. The secondary STEM pathway is a collaboration between TFA Detroit and CODE313, and provides high-quality coding and math workshops each day for students. 

DSLI: Fall Warm Up also serves to inform best teaching and family engagement practices that have had to move virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We want to make our program as easy as possible to access, which is why the sessions are short and designed to fit parents’ schedules,” said Dezmin McCoy, a 2014 TFA St. Louis alum who recently moved home to Detroit and is leading the summer program. “As a parent, I can understand the challenges other parents need to manage during COVID-19, and so we want to make sure to support them through this.” Ms. McCoy teaches full-time at Foreign Language Immersion and Cultural Studies School in the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD).

“CODE313 is proud to work with Teach For America Detroit for our Virtual Summer eXperience, and continue to help break down barriers between technology and young people in our region, said Bartel Welch,” executive director, CODE313. “We have been able to help over 20,000 students learn, thrive, grow and create by exposing them to technology instruction and resources over the past year and a half. We know that with instructors from TFA, CODE313’s mission to serve the community will be expanded and will enable us to make a greater collective impact.”

TFA Detroit launched Detroit Summer Learning Institute in 2019 as a free summer enrichment program for Detroit students, and as a learning space for early-career and pre-service teachers. 2020 DSLI: Fall Warm Up is staffed by nine educators who previously served with Teach For America, along with three current TFA Detroit educators and nine pre-service Detroit teachers who are leading sessions with students.

“Creating a high quality learning environment for students and teachers felt so important this summer as our education system struggled in the spring to make the transition to distance learning, leaving our most disadvantaged students behind,” said Armen Hratchian, executive director, Teach For America Detroit. “Our students need us to be more ready than ever this year.” 

Since 2010, TFA-Detroit educators have served more than 100,000 students. This fall, more than 90 Teach For America Detroit teachers will serve over 7,000 students in DPSCD and Detroit-based nonprofit charter schools, including 50 first- and second-year corps member teachers and 50 mid-career teaching fellows, half of whom are working together to become exemplar educators in culturally relevant pedagogy and nationally board certified.  

DSLI: Fall Warm Up runs from Monday, July 20 to Tuesday, August 4, and is made possible by support from the United Way for Southeastern Michigan. Major funders of TFA-Detroit include Detroit Children’s Fund, Skillman Foundation, FCA Foundation, and Ford Motor Company Fund.