June Jordan Students Plan for College and Career with Help from AdRoll

 

AdRoll employees meet with June Jordan sophomore students.

By their sophomore year, high school students are expected to start seriously thinking about life after graduation. While they’re still figuring out high school, navigating relationships and just being teenagers, deciding a life path can put a lot of pressure on a student, especially for those who come from a low-income household and might not receive extra support at home.

Enter the volunteer component of our College & Career Readiness program, in which San Francisco professionals are trained to coach high school students as they face tough decisions and exciting opportunities. After launching the program at Mission High School last semester, this month the San Francisco Education Fund brought the program to June Jordan School for Equity.

Employees from AdRoll will serve as volunteer coaches for students, expanding on the relationship the company has steadily built with June Jordan since 2014. As a Circle the Schools partner, AdRoll has hosted multiple events for June Jordan students, including a tour of their office last year where they met CEO Aaron Bell. The company also placed several students, including June Jordan juniors and seniors, in AdRoll internships.

On Friday, 10th grade students met with 21 employees from AdRoll in rapid succession as part of a speed matching event to determine who would be their coaches. Over pizza and Capri Sun, students talked with their prospective coaches about their goals and dreams.

Estuardo, a 10th-grader at June Jordan, sees the program as a chance to figure out all the colleges he should explore. While he already knows he’s interested in engineering, he admits he hasn’t yet fully considered which schools he should look at.

“I think it’s really cool,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to really engage and figure out what kind of college you want to go to and get advice.”

AdRoll employee Job understands firsthand just how difficult high school can be. Though he’s a successful advertising professional now, his future wasn’t always so clear.

“I got into a lot of trouble as a high school student,” he said. “I was hard to [reach]. I want to help someone like me and help them avoid some of the mistakes I made.”

Job is already familiar with the school after having volunteered for a June Jordan-AdRoll breakfast event and helping out during the office visit, but he looks forward to getting involved in a one-on-one capacity with a student. He said he’s excited to make “a real difference in someone’s life” and help a high school student work through difficult problems and choices.

While AdRoll employee Rebecca said the plan for her to attend college and then graduate school was drilled in from an early age, she knows many students don’t see higher education this way.

“I know not everyone thinks about it until it is too late,” she said. Rebecca said she wants to use her experience to help students figure out what college is really like and help them explore schools they might not know are out there.

As for what might make AdRoll employees nervous about the experience? On the ride over from AdRoll to June Jordan, Rebecca said it occurred to her and her colleagues that they might not know the lingo teens use today or what kind of music they listen to. She hopes she can relate to her student.

“We might not be cool anymore,” Rebecca said with a laugh.

Students will work with volunteers one-on-one for about an hour each week from sophomore year until graduation as they chart their college and career path. Stay tuned as we pair June Jordan students with their AdRoll coaches and follow their progress!

In addition to placing volunteers in classrooms, our College & Career Program also includes innovation grants for teachers. Learn more about the program.

Does your company want to adopt a school like June Jordan? Learn more about our Circle the Schools program, a partner program with sf.citi and SFUSD.

Nice guys finish last? Hardly.

The University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good – The Science of a Meaningful Life Center has compiled studies and articles that show the benefits of altruism.

Bottom line – keep giving your time and money to good causes because it is good for the community, and you!

• Altruism makes us happy: Researchers have consistently found that people report a significant happiness boost after doing kind deeds for others. Some studies suggest giving to others makes people feel happier than spending money on themselves; this has even been found among kids. These good feelings are reflected in our biology: giving to charity activates brain regions associated with pleasure, social connection and trust. Scientists also believe that altruism may trigger the release of endorphins in the brain, giving us a “helper’s high.”

• Altruism is good for our health: People who volunteer tend to experience fewer aches and pains, better overall physical health and less depression; older people who volunteer or regularly help friends or relatives have a significantly lower chance of dying. Researcher Stephen Post reports that altruism even improves the health of people with chronic illnesses such as HIV and multiple sclerosis.
• Altruism is good for our bottom line: Studies suggest that altruists may reap unexpected financial benefits from their kindness because others will feel compelled to reward their kindness; other research has found that donating money to charity might make corporations more valuable. Across the animal kingdom, animals that cooperate with each other are more productive and survive longer.
• Altruism is good for our love lives: When researcher David Buss surveyed more than 10,000 people across 37 cultures, he found that kindness was their most important criterion for a mate and the single universal requirement for a mate across all cultures.
• Altruism fights addiction: Studies have shown that addicts who help others, even in small ways, can significantly improve their chances of staying sober and avoiding relapse; this is true among adults and adolescents alike.
• Altruism promotes social connections: When we give to others, they feel closer to us, and we also feel closer to them. “Being kind and generous leads you to perceive others more positively and more charitably,” writes positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book The How of Happiness, and this “fosters a heightened sense of interdependence and cooperation in your social community.”
• Altruism is good for education: High-quality service learning programs, where students complement their classroom learning with real-world community service, improve academic performance and make students feel more connected to their school. And when students engage in “cooperative learning,” where they must work together to complete a project, they are more likely to have positive relationships, better psychological health and are less likely to bully their peers.
• Altruism is contagious: When we give, we don’t only help the immediate recipient of our gift. We also spur a ripple effect of generosity through our community. Research by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis has shown that altruism can spread by three degrees—from person to person to person to person. “As a result,” they write, “each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not met.”