SUMMER BREAKTHROUGH
STUDENTS THRIVE IN ‘NEAR-PEER’ TEACHING PROGRAM
Faith Galati and Jesus Aispuro Photo by Aniko Kiezel
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s most Sacramento middleschoolers celebrate the lazy days of summer, a few fortunate students are beginning a life-changing journey. Breakthrough Sacramento, an educational nonprofit, operates a middle school summer academy taught by college students. After closing in 2020 under the pandemic and reopening with a hybrid model in 2021, the program is back in full force for its 28th year in Sacramento. “Our program partners motivated, but underserved, middle school and high school students to assist them in graduating high school and entering college,” says Michael Covey, chair of the organization’s board of directors
CH By Cecily Hastings Publisher’s Desk
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and a retired teacher at Sacramento Country Day. During summers after their sixth, seventh and eighth grades, Breakthrough students participate in a rigorous, engaging six-week academy daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Students receive additional tutoring and counseling during the school year. “School-year assistance is also provided during their high school years, along with college counseling. We help them apply to colleges and financial assistance,” Executive Director Faith Galati says. “Many of these students will be the first generation of their family to attend college.” Student teachers, recruited from colleges all over the country, receive 80 hours of training in best practices. High school students also help teach. “This near-peer teaching provides the middle school students with role models for the types of people that they aspire to become,” Galati says. “The Breakthrough teaching experience can be life changing as many of the
student interns go on to the teaching profession.” Jesus Aispuro has been part of Breakthrough since sixth grade. This fall, he’s headed to Stanford on a scholarship. “The program allowed me to continue pursuing higher education for both high school and college,” he says. “I’m grateful that my parents supported me throughout the program and my extracurricular activities.” He continues, “Breakthrough literally changed the course of my life. Through participating in Breakthrough, I was also selected for the Country Day Scholar Program—a full scholarship to attend Sacramento Country Day School. Before that, public school was my only option. Country Day exposed me to numerous opportunities I’d not otherwise have had.” Aispuro credits his Breakthrough college counselor who helped him apply to several highly select universities and arranged a visit to Columbia in New York City. “In the end, Stanford was my best option,” Aispuro says.
“The Breakthrough experience is vital in the lives of the participating students and their families. A college degree leads to an average full-time pay that is almost twice that of a high school graduate,” Covey says. “Over the last 20 years, unemployment rates for college graduates are one-half that of students who only graduated high school, regardless of the state of the economy. Statistically, a college graduate has less than a 5-percent chance of falling below the poverty line once obtaining their degree.” Limited access to quality academic programs has historically hampered the progress of students from underserved communities. In 2020, young people from families in the top 20 percent income brackets were almost twice as likely to enter college as students with family incomes in the lowest 20 percent. “Thankfully, the trends have been improving significantly over the last 50 years, with high school graduation rates climbing in all communities to at least 80 percent, and college entry in
