Citizen Schools: An After-Hours Adventure
Professionals Mentoring Middle-Grades Students
Not long ago, an 8th grader from a hardscrabble neighborhood in this city decided on an ambitious career path: She would become a doctor. Many adults encouraged her, but when she spoke with a knowledgeable source, a Harvard University medical researcher, about how that goal meshed with her academic record, he offered her some blunt advice.
“He told me it’s hard. You have to put out a real effort,” recalled Andrea Pina, 13. “You have to go through a lot of years of college. … When I got my report card, he said I could do better.”
That discussion occurred as part of Citizen Schools, an apprenticeship program offered outside school hours that seeks to build students’ academic and leadership skills by connecting them with professionals from various fields. Launched in Boston in 1994, the program targets what some say is an underserved population in after-school education—middle school students—through a highly structured blend of...
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