Home

Neighbors of the John Tyler Elementary School on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, established the Friends of Tyler School (FOTS) in March of 1990. The mission and goal of FOTS is to provide educational and enrichment activities for children in inner city Washington, DC. The core program provides one-on-one tutoring with a volunteer tutor and mentor who promotes positive values and behaviors, provides emotional support, and helps the student to increase his/her academic skills, social skills, and self-confidence. After school and summer camp programs run by paid certified teachers and volunteers also help to reinforce these goals.

Tutoring Program

Jan Eichhorn: Founder

Tommy Wells: Chair

Catherine Groves Ramsdell: Vice Chair

Phylis Cunnungham: Secretary

Michael A. Eck: Treasurer

Britany Blocker

Ike Fulwood

Marcus Green

Elizabeth Hafner

Jennifer M. Long

William Matuszeski

Benjamin Longwood

Barbara Wells

Ann Womeldorf

Rick Halberstein: Legal Counsel

Katherine Powell: Master Tutor

Tonya Porter Woods: Executive Director

Gladys McNair: House Manager

Kevin Woods: Program Aide

Angelo Lockhart: Technology Instructor

Jan Eichhorn, Founder and Chairperson of Friends of Tyler School, started the program because she met a young boy in the playground of Tyler School, which is directly across from her house. The young boy was fond of Jan's dog, and and every day he would meet her when she would come home from work to walk her dog. They established a relationship and Jan began tutoring the boy with his parent's permission.

Jan recounts the fun she had mentoring, "I had such a great time, you know, taking him to museums and so forth, that I thought other neighbors would be interested in doing this. And certainly it was rewarding to the child because he was exposed to a lot of things that weren't available to him. He went to the Russian Embassy once, for example, with me. And so I leafleted neighbors and recruited 25 volunteers and started the Friends of Tyler School program in 1990."

The program started with 20 children identified by Tyler School who were kindergarten through third grade. After the space at Tyler School became to small, Jan and tutors moved the program to the balcony of a local McDonald's, where all of the children in the neighborhood found out about the program and started asking for tutoring. Today FOTS serves students through the high-school level, regardless of their neighborhood or school, so long as the student continues to have good attendance at school and at FOTS, which now occupies two townhouses in the Capitol Hill area.

More than 300 students have completed the program since its inception at Tyler School. Nearly 90 percent of the students who participated for three or more years have graduated from high school, and a majority of them were the first in their family to earn a high-school diploma.

For more information about FOTS founder, see Home Town Hero.