Episode Two: Building Pathways: Student-Centered Education from K–12 to College

In this episode, the B. Donta Truss sits down with Kyle Smitley, Founder & Executive Director, Detroit Achievement Academy & Detroit Prep, for a conversation that bridges K–12 education and higher education—and the pathways that connect them.

Kyle reflects on her leadership journey, from founding Detroit Achievement Academy to building Detroit Prep into a school community grounded in purpose and student-centered design. She shares what it means to truly center students in practice, and how her schools define success beyond traditional metrics like test scores—focusing instead on long-term growth, opportunity, and readiness. The conversation also explores the power of early exposure to higher education, particularly for students in urban communities. The episode highlights the role of meaningful partnerships between K–12 schools and higher education institutions, and how those collaborations can open doors and strengthen student pathways.

Production Support Provided By: 
The Bridge
The Division of Enrollment Development and College Futures
Media Production Intern, Grace Truss
University Libraries

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

We have always thought that teaching should be reinstated as a covetable career. It has fallen off. It used to be teacher, doctor, banker, whatever, and now no one wants their child to be a teacher anymore because it is a thankless job. Sure, maybe, but we're trying to sort of walk the walk in sort of reinstating that as a really great profession to have for life, not just for a couple years.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

You know, as I move and navigate uh in Detroit, I see people being very intentional. I see them with a bit of a hustle mentality, and then it plays out in their lives, and I love it. And I would imagine you see that in your in your learners and your students as well. This podcast is all about spending time with great leaders, hearing from them, learning about their journey, and then taking it back to the learner and making sure we focus on that learner and what can we do to make sure that we don't leave anybody behind when it comes to college entrance. Today I am here with Kyle. Kyle is the executive director of the Detroit Achievement Academy and also Detroit Prep, and more importantly, a friend and colleague of mine. And she is doing some outstanding work, and I'm excited to be here just to continue to hear from her and learn from her today. So welcome, Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

I'm so happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Awesome. We're glad to have you today. Uh it seemed like just yesterday when we got started and started putting things down together and building some really nice concepts that we took to implementation, and now it's kind of a way of life to do some of these things.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I know. It feels like yesterday, but apparently it was over five years ago. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yes, time is moving fast. So, you know, I've known you for almost six years, but I know some things that I don't know about you in regards to your journey. Why don't we take a moment and just hear from you about your educational journey, some things that you've picked up along the way, and how you've utilized those things that you've picked up along the way to ensure that you're creating barrier-free access to college for your learners and just helping them be overall successful?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

That's so such an exciting question to answer. I grew up in a small town. I went to college in a different small town after college. I took a year off. I was feeling like I needed a break. Uh, I started law school shortly thereafter and spent time in lots of major cities. When I started law school, I also at the same time started a very small company and ran both of those things at the exact same time. And as soon as I graduated from law school, I remember feeling like, okay, now I'll be happy because I can focus on my business. And spoiler alert, it just wasn't it for me. I believed that I was really good at managing money, I was really good at building a budget, I was really good at running things, I was good at all things outreach, but money for money's sake never really clicked for me. And so I decided to sort of dedicate my life to doing all the things I was good for, good at, but just for a better cause to actually move the needle. So I turned my attention to Detroit, a city I fell in love with when I was a kid, and I decided that I would volunteer at a great school. And I think the underlying theme there is just like not having a blueprint. I kind of came to Detroit and didn't have a plan, but I met a bunch of kids and families and just immediately knew that there was no going back and there was no other city and there was no other path forward other than to sort of like carve our own little community and our own path forward from that moment.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yeah, yeah. You know, as you shared your educational journey, I felt the passion. I I felt the the meaning behind what I see from you on a regular basis. I have a much better understanding of that. So I appreciate you sharing. And because of that, that that decision to move a little differently than you initially thought, so many lives have been impacted. So thank you for leaning in and going into some spaces that you didn't think you were gonna go into. Totally. Thanks. Yeah, you know, I've had an opportunity to spend some time um at the schools that you lead. It is very clear that being student-centered is a requirement. It's the standard. Talk a little bit about the importance of educational institutions, whether it's a middle school, whether it's a high school, whether it's a college, to be student-centered and student-focused.

unknown 4:29

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Being student-centered, I think, to some people means things like basing things around a student's sort of current reality. But one thing that I have focused on, and I know you have focused on through your work, is focusing design on students' futures, on their dreams, on their realities. And so this combination of meeting students where they're at, meeting families where they're at, but also holding in the other hand the sort of like boundless belief in their future and in their potential and in the removal of barriers between those two things is sort of what it means for us to be actually student-centered.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

I would be remiss if I didn't give you a moment just to share what does the city of Detroit mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

To me, Detroit is just the best city ever. It is the most fun, it's the most exciting, it's the richest, it's the most culturally rich, it's the it is a joy constantly to live and work there. Um, so often people will say, I'm thinking about like moving Detroit to Detroit for a year, should I? And I'm like, that's such a complicated answer because if you move, you won't be able to leave. So if you're coming for a year, that's probably not a good place for you because I could never imagine existing anywhere else. It's that I love it.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Yeah, yeah. I have grown to love Detroit. It's such a special place. And you know, that matches that intentionality that we talked about just a minute ago as well. You know, as I move and navigate uh in Detroit, I see people being very intentional. I see them with a bit of a hustle mentality, and then it plays out in their lives, and I love it. And I would imagine you see that in your in your learners and your students as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Totally. I think the concept of having a school like ours that has a habit of character of perseverance, grit is everything, Detroit. Detroit is grit, right? And so it's very exciting to be able to focus on things like character with perseverance or compassion in a city that just exudes it constantly.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah. You know, so many times in education, uh, whether it's higher ed, whether it's K through 12, um, we we focus on standardized tests or assessing, you know, what um has been learned or what should be learned. You know, talk a little bit about for you how do you measure success? How do you gauge whether or not we won the battle with this amazing young person?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

When we were in our founding years, 2013, we came to Grand Valley State University to be authorized with the concept of what we called an expanded definition of student success. At the time, and as you mentioned, a lot of schools still now have one definition of student success, and that's just a score, a number on something standardized. And again, 13 years ago, we think we said that there was a bigger definition. We said that things like belonging deserved to be a part of the conversation, things like character, things like dimensions of student achievement that we have, which are character, high quality work, and student achievement, mastery of knowledge and skills. So there are there are many different ways that we measure student success. I think for us, we recently removed test data from that. We measure literally joy. We measure how our students show up for their communities, we measure the literal quality and the real world application of their work and how they interface with their with their microcommunity, their classroom, and then their broader community.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, yeah, such a powerful, powerful statement. You know, when you when you are committed to doing what you just described around measuring success, um, and you're receiving other persons that might have been in different environments, whether it's a teacher or even a student that might have been at another school that didn't have the same commitment to your definition of success, how do they receive it?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So we were really prepared to do a lot of convincing about all the different components of our model. Our model is really different. We do things differently, almost all things differently than all schools. And some things we do have to convince people about, but things like the expanded definition of student success, there's almost no convincing. For teachers, for families, for students, we will just look at everyone and say, students are more than a test score. This child's brilliance and their ability to succeed long term is absolutely not summed up in one micro moment in time. It is just a moment in time, and that's how we're gonna look at it. And everyone's like, yeah, that's appropriate. So that has been a blessing.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

I love it. That that's awesome. You know, we think about hiring all the time. You know, I'm here at Grand Valley State University. We're thinking about, you know, how how do we get more learners to take advantage of this? How do we get more learners to to want to be a part of this because we know what college can do for one's trajectory, right? With that in mind, what's the value of early awareness of higher ed, early exposure to what the college experience would look like?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

We have lived the value of early exposure to a college environment firsthand in a beautiful way through our partnership with the Grand Valley Pathways Program, which we're very grateful to be a part of. We have been had prior had been speaking to our students about college. Um they hear about college as all K-8 students do, in a sort of like abstract way. But exposure for us, we watched it immediately shift how they spoke about themselves from an if place, if I go, if that's a thing, if college, whatever, to a when, right? So having this persistent exposure to not only literally physically going to different parts of the Grand Valley campus, to also having mentors from Grand Valley that have a similar background to them, to having representatives from Grand Valley come to them and say, Here, I'm here to teach you, I'm here to support you, I'm here to help you through this part of the process because you're worth it, because we care, because we want you, has I think it has changed the brain chemistry of kids and adults.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah. You know, I remember when we um, you, because you spoke of the partnership, started working together, and we created the eighth-grade pathway, and I was there to make the announcement for the learners that were there saying, Hey, you have already been admitted into college. Now you don't have to come to Grand Valley, but but if you choose to, we are glad to have given you the first admissions letter. As I was making that announcement, I was looking out in the audience, you were sitting in like the second row or something, and and I saw your face as you were looking around the room and seeing the parents hear it. And I think the first time I announced it, they were like, what does that mean? And then we we circled back and said it again on the spot, and it was like, seriously? Uh-huh. And and I saw your face. And I believe the level of authenticity and how genuine that you and that moment was was amazing. Talk a little bit about the importance of being authentic with our learners and you know, being in this work for the right reasons.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah, I think that's the only way to sustain any amount of meaningful leadership is you have to truly believe it. In order for your community to thrive, you have to love your community. And if you don't, then you've got to figure out how to reset, right? Like we, you know, we no leader is perfect. Every leader needs sort of like a tool to reset and a mechanism to reset. Um, but we have a saying in our building that student love for one another will never outpace adult love for one another. So our student culture, our student warmth, our family warmth won't ever outpace the amount of genuine love that I'm showing to our community, that I'm showing to our adults, and our adults are showing to one another. So we truly believe that like a genuine care is fundamental to literally academic success for kids. So if you if you're not in it for the right reasons, then kids will kids will suffer.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, yeah. You know, 30 years from now, and we're looking back, what do you want the impact that you've made to look like, to feel like, and one uh persons to have experienced? What what is that? What will that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

It's so interesting. I think when you think about legacy, my view has shifted year to year almost, right? I think back maybe 10 years ago, I would have said it needs to be bigger. It needs to be a bigger footprint, major scale, major, you know, generational wealth disruption, I probably would have said then, which I think is true, major access disruption, which I think is still true. I want kids who literally would have had zero access to just be like throwing doors open and know without a doubt that they belong in and own a space and that they have power in a space. Okay. But now that we've reached a lot of those goals, I literally think that my definition for like true legacy is like almost more micro. Like it's like sort of like one life, one college degree, one anything. We have a we have students who are, I knew met when they were four years old at a farmer's market, me begging their parents to take a risk on us to open who were I was opening a school to take a risk on sending their kid to our school for first grade, right? I was just a crazy lady at a farmer's market. And those students are now freshmen in college at Grand Valley and they're thriving and they're studying to be a nurse, and they have they're part of a program that offers free tuition and they got a binding college acceptance when they were in eighth grade. And I'm like, yeah, I'm good. Like I'm all set with that one student. It's so it's it's much more micro now.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah. Yo, if if you had uh had the ability to speak a partnership into existence right now, as we're we're looking at and and talking to people who are watching, talk to us about what that partnership would look like, what's needed to go next level for you, um, what needs to be a part of it. I mean, we're gonna speak it into a manifestation, right? Totally manifest. We're gonna manifest the perfect next partnership for you. Yeah. Or pathway. Uh-huh. Speak to the group.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, I think, I think our perfect partnership is, you know, not to play to the audience, right? But it is our Grand Valley partnership, right? It is our meaningful partnership with an institution that has the ability, the will, the mindset, all the heart, the capability to disrupt systems that are presenting themselves as barriers for our kids, right? So literally, and those don't exist anywhere. That's not a corporation. That's a major educational institution, right? That has the ability to say, I don't care who you are, I don't care where you're from, you're wanted here, and I'm going to give you a really tangible path, this big fat diploma, towards economic prosperity. But there's no corporate funder that could give us anything like that at scale. So I think for us, the Dream Partnership looks like a deepened partnership with a sort of respected nationally, globally educational facility like Crane Valley. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And we're glad to be a part of all the work that you're doing. You know, we also talked earlier about the power of the voices of the students and the learners that we serve. I share it with you about Rep4, an initiative that President Mantella uh started some six, seven years ago, uh six years ago now. And that initiative allows for the learners themselves to talk about, to describe, to solve for concerns, issues, barriers that they encounter. And through Rep4, we listen to the learners and then we solve based on what they're sharing, right? We're valuing their voices, we're elevating their voices. With that in mind, if we were listening to some of your learners, some of your K through eighth graders, what would they say would be a key barrier that we as educational leaders ought to be removing quickly?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

For them?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

For them, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Gosh, our kids are such world changers and such little mini activists that, um, but they also live in this beautiful world of um isolation. So if a kindergartner were sitting in this seat or a second grader, they would say, the bees are being depleted. You could, if you're an educational institution, you should be really fixing the bee population. Um, if you're a fifth grader, you'd say, like, water pollution is a major barrier for me and water access for our community. So I I don't know. I think a lot of them are very lucky to have sort of an outlook that they are carving their own path. And so they don't often perceive or articulate many barriers. Um, but I think the concept of you can't dream about being what you can't see is something that I'm always thinking about when I'm looking at them. I am always delighted when we are presenting a different career pathway or a different life pathway that they have not yet been exposed to that lights them up, like an artisan, a cra, a craftsman, a any any sort of an interesting career, an engineer, a mechanical engineer, a computer engineer. Um, so I think continuing to sort of like make sure that kids everywhere have exposure to sort of like what the next century jobs are going to be would be, would be a big barrier.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah, yeah. You know, you and I, when we you when we meet, we usually say, okay, what next big thing are we gonna go in and and solve for or go after, right? I enjoy those conversations. Some good things have come out of them. Um, we know right now, um, when you look at the educational landscape or just the the the climate of the country, we know that AI is a driver of innovation right now. Talk a little bit about how you've embraced AI at your institution and how you're using it.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, as a school, we still fundamentally are at odds with some AI thinking. So we still fundamentally believe that kids learn best through a direct teacher-student relationship, a human being teacher giving direct instruction and building a relationship with a student. There are some people who say computers can do that. We fundamentally disagree. However, we do think AI as a tool for teachers to produce planning time, to be able to meet more students exactly where they're at is sort of the secret to success.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Kyle, as an educational institution, I am sure there are times when you need new teachers, new team members. Say to the to the audience what a teacher looking for a space that might be interested in you would experience and how awesome it would be. Because I feel like it would be just amazing. So speak to the prospective person really quickly.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Our schools are amazing. Our schools are the most special. We offer a lot of things. We offer a salary schedule that is 25% higher than the state of Michigan's average. We offer an hour of planning time a day. We offer big, huge chunks of grade level planning time, just lots of planning time. Um we have the best coworkers in the entire state. Over, I would say 10% of our classroom teachers make over $100,000 a year, which is pretty unheard of. Um, and then after 10 years with us, you get a fully paid, no strings attached, sabbatical year to go do whatever you want because we believe in sort of reinvesting in people who are teachers are pouring into their students just constantly 24-7. And so we believe in that year of healing. So we have always thought that teaching should be reinstated as a covetable career. It has fallen off. It used to be teacher, doctor, banker, whatever. And now no one wants their child to be a teacher anymore because it is a thankless job. Sure, maybe, but we're trying to sort of walk the walk in sort of reinstating that as a really great profession to have for life, not just for a couple years.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Man, you almost made me want to send my resume, Kyle. What are we doing? Yeah, 10 years. Yo, thank you so much for joining the Pathways Project Podcast, Kyle. It has been a joy. I look forward to us doing even bigger things together. Yeah, I'll visit Detroit soon. We'll get together. Thank you all for joining us today as well. Uh, we look forward to the next time and bringing other leaders in to continue to elevate voices so that we can make sure we're creating barrier-free pathways to and through college. Thank you so much. Have a great day.