Did you know that about two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic achievement gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their more advantaged peers can be explained by what happens over the summer? Nearly 1,300 Silicon Valley middle and high school students will avoid the “summer slide” this year by attending an ALearn program in Math and College Readiness—for free!
Thanks to donors like Microsoft Silicon Valley, approximately 8,000 underserved students have avoided the summer slide since 2007. Most of program’s participants are low-income students and will be the first in their families to attend college.
Here’s a quick overview of our three-pronged approach:
- Math: Success in math predicts success in high school and college. This summer, 24 classes, totaling 658 6th and 7th graders, are finishing 4- or 6-week classes in 10 schools. Students are learning about everything from fractions to geometry, using the Pearson Navigator curriculum, Khan Academy modules, and hands-on exercises from RAFT (Resource Area For Teachers). A total of 611 incoming 9th graders in our 25 classes are learning algebra, geometry, or Common Core Math.
- College Readiness: Academic lessons and activities are the cornerstone of all our programs. All students follow an informative and inspiring curriculum that includes researching a college of their choice. They also have the opportunity to visit a local Bay Area university, such as San Jose State, Stanford, or Santa Clara. 9th grade students work with a high school counselor to design a 4-year academic plan that will get them on the college track.
- Growth Mindset: The core belief that abilities are malleable and success depends on hard work and perseverance underpins all of ALearn‘s work. Most of our students have not been successful in math, and our goal is to teach them that they can be. As the research by Stanford professor Carol Dweck shows, if students believe that their intelligence is something that they can develop and increase, they are more likely to be successful.
How You Can Help
You can donate to ALearn or volunteer time and skills. Last year, Xbox engineers Nathan Slattengren and Steve Schmidt wowed our students by showing them the hardware inside the gaming console and describing how algebra is used in developing and shipping over 84 million Xboxes! Our students got to see college grads in action and how math is used in the “real world”.
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Kim Guptill is ALearn’s Marketing Lead. She spent 15 years consulting with Hewlett-Packard, helping them market their servers and PCs. Her last assignment was producing videos for HP TouchSmart computers. She is the former Grants Manager at the Leo M. Shortino Family Foundation, which makes grants to organizations that support at-risk youth in education and the arts. Her passion exactly matches ALearn’s: to launch low-income, first generation students on a trajectory to college.
Kim holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arizona, a Master’s of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and an M.A. in Organizational Communication from Purdue.
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To learn more about Microsoft’s commitment to youth and education, visit our YouthSpark Hub or follow us on twitter at @msftcitizenship.
