The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘13th grade’ program helps high school grads
Alumni Lab sessions pay struggling former students to learn about new life and career options.
Some had children and other family caretaking responsibilities. Others started and stopped degree programs, racking up debt for careers they thought they wanted at 17.
Now, dozens of young adults in Brooklyn have moved into their own apartments or been able to provide health care for their children as they jump-start sustainable careers as computer scientists, carpenters, health care and IT technicians, education specialists and chefs.
Paid $500 to participate in a six-week “13th grade” Alumni Lab, Bushwick’s Math, Engineering and Science Academy (MESA) Charter High School grads are showing the country a model for engaging disconnected youth, as in those unemployed and not attending college.
“Life has not gone as they were led to believe it would,” said MESA’S co-executive director and co-founder Arthur Samuels. “… You have all of these kids who are not tethered to any institution, but the institution that they are tethered to is their high school. We need to leverage that relationship.”
“We create this artificial bright line that happens on the day of graduation: June 23, you’re our kid. June 24, we give you a diploma and you’re someone else’s problem,” he added.
The population of disconnected or opportunity youth under 25 is growing nationally. Including teenagers who’ve dropped out of high school, nearly 15% of Chicago’s young people are in the same position.
The counts underestimate just how many young people are struggling post-graduation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those who are working under age 25 make up 44% of people at or below federal minimum wage, often without benefits.
And thousands of seats in New York City’s workforce programs designed for unemployed youth are unfilled because of recruitment and retention challenges.
Yet MESA’S workshop and coaching alumni lab is near full capacity, this spring wrapping up their third cohort in its inaugural year, with 71% of 42 young adults going back to college or into a free workforce development program.
Working connections
Alumni say workshops feel welcoming and familylike. During one April session, a 4-month-old napped in a stroller next to her mother. The cohort goes for lunch regularly, chatting about internship possibilities or recent TV obsessions. All sessions are taught by former MESA teachers, far from judgmental strangers.
Beyond technical resume writing and interview support, biweekly 90-minute sessions explore growth mindset, self-awareness and making goals — skills that help young people, particularly alumni of color, work through feelings of inadequacy, shame or feeling like an impostor.
“It requires a real vulnerability,” Samuels said. “… I think they’re willing to do that because of the relationships.”
Launched three years ago as school leaders encountered more and more alumni who appeared to be working low-wage jobs or dropping out of degree programs to make ends meet, the model is expanding. Other Brooklyn principals have identified the urgent need to support alumni, particularly those in the pandemic generation.
MESA has formally partnered with the High School for Fashion Industries for next school year; at least two other schools are in talks as well.
Looking beyond graduation
While a high school’s success is often sized up by its graduation rate, co-executive director and co-founder Pagee Cheung believes metrics from alumni’s post-secondary lives should serve as a wake-up call.
“The goal is beyond just graduation numbers — how are they surviving once they leave?” said Cheung. “There’s a vacuum in accountability and responsibility.”
Five years after graduating, Jackie, a young mother, sat intensely focused at a full table in her alma mater’s media library. She and Eduardo, who graduated in 2020 into an uncertain world, shared a table as they decided their top three work programs from a packet of options.
Without MESA, Eduardo said he would be scouring the internet for programs he felt met his interests, without much understanding of financial literacy or what made a high-quality program.
“It would be a waste of my time,” he told The 74.
Taking a new approach
Starting in 2023, participants were compensated $500 for attending two 90-minute workshops for six weeks.
“If they’re cutting back on their hours at Foot Locker [to attend], that’s a hard ask,” Samuels said. “Forgoing income in the short term might mean getting evicted or missing meals. Having the ability to offset some of that lost income through stipends made a huge difference.”
Beyond financial obstacles, there are often mental barriers that prevent young people from being able to participate in similar programs.
“For many of them, there’s this shame and guilt attached to not being where they should be or comparing themselves to others,” Cheung said.
Participants also described a sort of imposter syndrome when they are accepted into a workforce or degree program, a feeling they’re not deserving of the opportunity.
In leading workshops, MESA teachers emphasize trial and error to counter the narrative that young people have to know exactly what they want to do by age 20. A former student who wanted to become a firefighter, for example, was coached to try out a common exercise regimen, then decided he couldn’t sustain that for years.
When second cohort alum Luis Rodriguez first graduated in 2020, he followed the path he always imagined: pursuing college sports. But when the pandemic halted athletics and he didn’t feel the quality of education was “as good as I thought it would be,” he left.
Rodriguez worked at various factories and warehouses in Pennsylvania and New York before he heard about MESA’S workshops from a friend. He didn’t hesitate to get involved, wanting to figure out a new path instead of working nonstop.
But it wasn’t until MESA’S alumni program presented culinary arts as a career possibility and a former coach pushed him that he seriously considered it.
In late April, Rodriguez finished his first shift at a Mexican fusion restaurant in Astoria.
“I would still be at a warehouse job, honestly, if I didn’t find this workshop. And still be lost.”
This story comes from our partner The 74. The 74 is an independent, nonprofit national education news website dedicated to covering issues affecting America’s 74 million children. Visit them online at The74million.org.