Astor Collegiate Bootcamp

Astor Collegiate Academy in the Bronx heard about us from another long-time partner of ours, Central Park East High School (and Bennett Lieberman, the principal there, has been such an angel to Yleana!). They asked us to prep 27 students for the SAT; we agreed to do an intensive bootcamp during students’ February break - so students came to school at 9am every day on their vacation (!) to improve their SAT scores!

When we’re scheduling bootcamps and SAT classes, we get as close to the 80-hour mark as possible with students (80 hours is the point where real score increases begin):

Since the Astor Collegiate bootcamp was in person, it was an opportunity for Alyssa and Garrett (who have been working together since 2014!) to work with each other in person again, and a chance for them to meet Ceci in person, who has worked for Yleana since 2020 remotely. It is always so much fun when the staff gets to be together - we all really enjoy each other’s company - and it makes the bootcamps something we really look forward to!

Astor Collegiate’s students seemed really excited about the content of the bootcamp - one student told Alyssa mid-week, “This bootcamp is the best thing this school has ever done!” Students were engaged, asking questions, and attentive. Alyssa and Garrett, who have been part of a year-long partner collaboration with Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women and last year helped to coach teachers at Dunbar and Carver HS in Baltimore, were able to bring all the lessons of planning, rigor, college prep, and teacher coaching that they’ve learned through Yleana’s other partnerships - while also injecting Astor Collegiate's program with a healthy dose of fun (and corny jokes from Alyssa)!

As Alyssa said, “Every time I teach, I remember that this was what I was born to do. We always talk about hearing the kernel of truth in a student’s utterance, and it’s always an absolute pleasure to explain to kids how they got it RIGHT. This time, I went further and explained that when they got things jumbled up in their minds because they had so much new information that they were trying to organize, that ‘jumbling’ was actually CONSTRUCTIVE - we know that, according to cognition experts, it is a hallmark that your brain is organizing the information into a knowledge map (linking new ideas to existing ideas and creating relationships between them). So when students understand that their ‘mistakes’ are actually indicators that they’re getting it, they feel more comfortable to make mistakes and try things. It creates a sense of safety and agency over academics in the classroom. It was an amazing experience and I’m so excited for the bootcamp we’re doing over April break!”