Oakland Serves mentors affect the education of more than four hundred students every week.

Our mentors go into over 20 classrooms on a weekly basis.  Consider these reasons that five Oakland high schools are engaging our mentors this fall to improve graduation rates:

• Increase the success rate of 9th graders in Algebra 1.  Failure in this class is linked to more challenges in upper grades and a higher chance of dropping out. Getting mentors into these classes has been a key priority for Oakland Serves this year and we now work in six  Algebra 1 classes across two schools.

• Increase success in recovering credit for students that did not succeed the first time. Students have varied reasons for failing courses but when they want to try again, we want to help.  In history, Spanish and English academic recovery classes, many need extra help understanding material and they truly appreciate having a mentor nearby to keep them progressing.  

• Provide assistance to English Language Learners in understanding material content and instructions.  In dedicated ELD classes, and even in regular classrooms, students who are not fluent in English face a double academic challenge.  Our mentors work with these students so that they can complete assignments while increasing fluency and growing toward independent learning.

Oakland Serves continues to work with school personnel to identify ways our in-school mentors can help students achieve academic success.