Delta State volunteer Elsie Lynn Ervin (right) provides directions for Teach For America corps members arriving Sunday to the Delta State campus. Over 100 Delta State and Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce volunteers braved the heat to welcome participants as they arrived. Members of Cleveland Boy Scout Troops 2, 23, and 4442 were on hand to assist with luggage as participants moved into university residence halls.
Check-in and registration tables were set up inside Wyatt Gym, while the Welcome Wagon located outside the gym was filled with fans, ice cream, and bottled water provided for the guests as temperatures climbed to the upper 90 degrees. Registration concluded with an evening cookout on the Delta State Quadrangle.
About 550 new corps members arrived Sunday, bringing the total of Teach For America students and staff at Delta State to over 1,000, an increase of over 200 participants over last year. The Teach For America corps members and staff will be at Delta State and the Delta until mid-July.
Around 300 Teach For America students, will remain in the Delta region for the next two years to teach in public schools.
The 2011 Teach For America Delta Institute is the second summer institute hosted by Delta State since it was chosen in 2009 as the eighth Teach for America training location and the first in a rural setting, joining Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.
