College Readiness

We asked a few rising college sophomores what they wish they had known before they went to college. Here is their advice organized under three lists encompassing communication and advocacy skills, academic and study skills, and social and college life. Communication & Advocacy Skills ❶ Take advantage of the mental health professionals that are on campus if you are struggling with ANYTHING mentally. They are there for you and should be used no matter how large or little your problems may seem. ❷ Go to Office

With the support of all of you this year we have been able to serve over 200 middle and high school youth in after-school programs filled with STEM and Art enrichment that we offer at LEAP and in the Salem and Gloucester public schools and 150 students in our College Success programs. This June, we will have 31 high school youth from Salem, Peabody and Gloucester graduating. And, thanks to everyone here, we continue to have 100% high school graduation and 100% college enrollment. And 85%

In LEAP for Education’s College Success Program (CSP), it is one of our goals to support students while leading them towards finding their own autonomy, which is vital in order to succeed as independent adults in college and future careers. It is important to the CSP staff that students are taught the appropriate way to communicate with every professional in their lives. In addition, it is incredibly important that our students see themselves as adults who can solve problems instead of looking for adults around them

I recently heard someone say, “The choices we make, make us”. Ironically I had just finished two books, Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir entitled My Beloved World and Wes Moore’s book, titled The Other Wes Moore, One Name, Two Lives. In each book Justice Sotomayor and author and activist Wes Moore talk about the choices they made, both growing up amidst poverty. I have often spoken about the important role LEAP plays in providing social capital to our students. And as I pondered this statement about choices, I

Yibelis Pena graduated Salem High School in 2010 and North Shore Community College in 2012 and will be attending Northeastern University in the Fall of 2012 as a transfer student.  Yibelis was a speaker at the Great Expectations Event and spoke about the value of college success programs in support students through graduation.  Yibelis received generous scholarships from Northeastern and the Steven Phillips Scholarship. Good evening! I would like to start off by congratulating both the high school and college class of 2012 on your success.

This is the speech that one of our students gave at our Great Expecations fundraiser on June 5, 2012. This compelling speech describes the challenges immigrant youth face when they come to the US as teenagers and how after-school academic programs provide needed supports and social capital. Johanna graduated Salem High School in 2010, North Shore Community College in 2012 and will be entering Northeastern University in September, 2012 as a transfer student with generous scholarships from the Steven Phillips Scholarship and Northeastern University. Good Evening

I am starting a 3-part blog on linking education with a clear career path. Why?  A large percentage of our students are disengaged from learning.  Nationwide 50% of our kids do not go on to any post-secondary education (38% here in Essex County, MA), there is a growing gender gap showing boys significantly lagging in education, and an alarming percentage of remediation in community colleges and high public college drop out rates. Teen employment is at its all time low.  While the current recession has definitely

I just cannot get into the madness that envelops the NCAA basketball championships or for that matter any major or minor sporting event. Sportsmania, sports worshipping, couch potato-spectator sports, fantasy sports – you name it, I just don’t get it.   Pickup games, intramural, youth-run leagues without parents or adults – those I do get because those are adults and kids who play sports because they love it. They don’t need uniforms or parent adulation – they just want to play because it is fun and it

  In today’s (January 30, 2011) Sunday Boston Globe,  Lawrence Harmon wrote an Opinion piece entitled “The Transition Coach.”  This article talks about a Boston Foundation-funded program, Boston Success, that places college coaches into the community colleges to help students coming for Boston Public Schools navigate college. The goal of these programs is to improve college retention, particularly for students who are first in their family to go on to post-secondary education. The article correctly pointed out that the real solution lies in fixing the high

Have you ever tried to read a book in a language other than your native language?  In college, after 6 years of middle and high school French and having spent a summer in France, I decided I would take a 20th century French Literature course — in French, of course. We read such easy page-turners as Madame Bovary (Flaubert), Man’s Fate (Camus), No Exit (Sartre) – you get the picture. It was painful.  Armed with a French-English dictionary, it took me forever to navigate one page