WHAT IS THE YLEANA FOLLOW-UP PROGRAM?

After spending three weeks learning the SAT strategies that will help them succeed, students stay on track with the strategies - practicing them, refining them, and testing themselves on them - during our follow-up program, in preparation for the October 2016 test.

Run like a day of camp, it takes place in each of the cities on a college campus in that city (exact locations TBD, but likely Baltimore: JHU or Loyola, Philadelphia: UPenn) between 9am-5pm on August 27, Sept 10, Sept 17, and Sept 24, 2016.

You will run games, reinforce existing strategies, and endeavor to instruct as creatively and engagingly as humanly possible.

You will likely be in a classroom with other teachers (who are existing Yleana staff) for at least some of the time, but other times you’ll be on your own in a room with your pod (your smaller academic group of 5-8 kids).

Our kids build strong bonds with their teachers; being an Yleana teacher is a commitment not only to the job, but to our kids.

We will train you prior to your time with the kids; you will be expected to take the training seriously and the preparation seriously.

We will send lesson plans for each class, and you will be expected to execute them with panache.

MASTER TEACHERS:

• Master Teachers are in charge of their own SAT classrooms, teaching Critical Reading, Writing and Math.

• They receive extensive administrative, curricular, and staff assistance.

• We provide teachers strategies they are expected to teach, daily lessons, a bevy of curricula, and institutional support (our Camp Director is an SAT expert/teacher and oversees the overall program).

ASSISTANT TEACHERS:

• Assistant Teachers will help SAT master teachers, functioning as co-teachers in teaching Critical Reading, Writing and Math.

• You will receive extensive administrative, curricular, and staff assistance.

• We provide teachers strategies they are expected to teach, daily lessons, a bevy of curricula, and institutional support (our Camp Director is an SAT expert/teacher and oversees the overall program).

• Our class sizes are small - 12-14 and under, with both a master and assistant teacher/counselor in each room:

• We emphasize small group instruction, and often divide students into different teams and groups for different assignments, as well as emphasizing team-teaching.

WHAT IS THE YLEANA LEADERSHIP ACADEMY?

The Yleana Leadership Academy is a residential summer academy which serves rising high school seniors in urban areas (Boston, Lynn/Salem/Peabody, NYC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore) and seeks to close the achievement gap through a three-week transformative intervention summer SAT experience.

We are part summer camp (on Colgate University's campus in upstate NY), part intense SAT training using the Socratic method and grounded in asking the questions that help to cultivate higher order thinking skills, and part leadership academy:

We explore issues like race, class, power, income inequality, prisons, etc through our Issues curriculum, an open-forum discussion setting where we question these issues through readings by people like James Baldwin, Junot Diaz, bell hooks, Michelle Alexander, WEB DuBois, and Sherman Alexie.

We also help our students acquire and hone the soft skills they need through a lens that answers the question "What do I do after college?" through our Entrepreneurship class, which culminates in a one-day startup fair with real live entrepreneurs from everywhere from London to Istanbul to Philadelphia to NYC advising the students all day until they face off in a Shark Tank competition.

Students (all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch, most of whom are first-generation) attend on full scholarship and, besides studying for the SAT, being part of Issues and taking Entrepreneurship classes, enjoy a traditional summer camp experience (complete with Friday night campfires!) while becoming a part of a welcoming and introspective camp community.

One of the greatest compliments we received in 2014 came from a student who had been in foster care and had had trouble with her parents telling us that Yleana was the first place she felt safe, like people really cared about her.

We strive to create and promote that atmosphere - a loving, caring, safe place for kids who haven't always had it easy.

In 2015, our average score improvement in a 3-week period was 250 points on the SAT (out of 2400).

Besides just raising our kids' SAT scores, we also ensure that they have the one-on-one financial aid follow-up that they need in order to apply those SAT scores to the schools that would meet both their financial and academic needs.

For Master Teachers:

• Our ideal candidates are college graduates with significant experience teaching the SAT, or significant experience teaching, generally, and demonstrated aptitude on the SAT (we can ONLY hire dualists).

• Master Teachers would need to score a 720 on each section.

• Our curriculum includes games, interactive activities, practice tests, and numerous strategies; Nevertheless, we prefer instructors who can teach the SAT without ample assistance, who can improvise, and generally who understand how to communicate the test to diverse groups of students - to be creative and outside the box in their approach.

For Assistant Teachers:

• Ideal candidates are either in college or new graduates.

• Ideal candidates have demonstrated aptitude on the SAT.

• Assistant teachers would need to score a 650 on each section.

Pluses:

• Teaching experience, creativity and passion, and interest in serving as a mentor/role model to our students.

CANDIDATES OF COLOR ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO APPLY.

Flexible, organized, meticulous, good at prioritizing multiple tasks at once, and creative thinkers.

The Yleana Leadership Academy, the flagship program of the Yleana Leadership Foundation, is a residential summer academy which serves rising high school seniors in urban areas (Baltimore, Boston/North Shore of MA, NYC, and Philadelphia) and seeks to close the achievement gap through a three-week transformative intervention summer SAT experience on a college campus. We are part college experience, part summer camp, part intense SAT training, and part leadership academy. In addition to SAT classes, students explore issues like race, class, and gender through our Issues curriculum, an open-forum discussion setting where they question these issues through readings by people like James Baldwin, Junot Diaz, bell hooks, and Sherman Alexie. We also help our students develop higher order/critical thinking skills through our Entrepreneurship class, which culminates in a one-day startup fair with entrepreneurs from all over the world advising the students all day until their crowning faceoff - a Shark Tank competition.

Yleana campers are typically low-SES, of color, and first-generation college students; all attend on full scholarship. Besides studying for the SAT, being part of Issues and Entrepreneurship classes, campers enjoy a traditional summer camp experience (complete with campfires and S’mores!) while becoming a part of a welcoming and introspective camp community. One of the greatest compliments we have received came from a student who had been in foster care and had faced significant obstacles at home who told us that Yleana was the first place she felt safe, where people truly cared about her.

In 2017, our average score improvement in a 3-week period was 160-180 points on the SAT.