Our HIT Coaches provide students with academic support not only in Math and ELA, but summer programming as well.
We are four weeks into summer programming here at Thurgood Marshall Academy! Besides summer school, I support summer programs that are offered by TMA. Summer prep and orientation for the incoming 9th grade and SAT/College prep bootcamp for juniors are underway. In addition, we have dual enrollment participants from the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades across five different institutions, and three High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) program participants enrolled in the Modern States “Freshman Year for Free” online program. Those three students are taking one or two first year college courses to potentially earn those credits for free before starting 10th grade next school year. Guess who has the distinct pleasure of working with these “college ready” aspiring TMA students?
Over the past month I have been working with these students as a TMA dual enrollment program coordinator. I also supervise the modern state program participants and their coursework.
Dual Enrollment Program
Thurgood Marshall Academy currently has twenty students enrolled in college courses at the following institutions: University of the District of Columbia, Marymount University, Bard College, Montgomery College, Bowie State University, and Virginia State University. While most of the dual enrollment programs & courses are online only, a few programs have an on-campus component. This means some students are getting complete college experience – living on campus with roommates and taking their dual enrollment course(s)! I think our student Blessin C, on campus at Marymount university and taking a “Maker-neering” course, sums it up nicely:
“The program is going great! So far, we’ve done a lot of 3D designing and learning about Virtual reality, AI, and things like that.”
For the Modern States online program, I selected the three participants – Anthony T, Beyonca W, and Kailani M – based on their excellent participation in the HIT program. They are currently taking just one course each: Introduction to Psychology, American Literature, Social Sciences and History. The program course and lectures are all online and self-paced, requiring a significant amount of self-management, focus and commitment. As I expected, these three have lived up to the challenge! They show up mostly on time and ready to get to work. They take the initiative to continue working on their own time outside TMA – weekends, etc. They are all curious as to the process of how all this translates to college credit eventually!
The Biggest Challenge
Coordinating all of this, and persuading these 9th, 10th, and 11th graders that “consistent communication and updates regarding your course progress” is critical! Most of them aren’t used to communicating consistently via email with TMA staff, especially via their official TMA student emails. But it’s all a learning process for them, and I’ve encouraged them all to make the most of their summer program experience! It is a pleasure to support summer programs at TMA and I’m excited to see the students shine into fall.