When Breakthrough Director of College Access Shannon Ferguson texted Fitsum Woldemeskel on a Thursday asking if he could jump on a Zoom call for a CCF interview Friday, he got an immediate yes. Nothing unusual about that—except Fitsum is a sophomore at UMass Boston now, two years removed from Breakthrough Greater Boston’s program.
“There is absolutely no way I would have done that as a sophomore in college,” Shannon laughs. “It speaks to his experience with Breakthrough.”
That bond captures something essential about Breakthrough Greater Boston. Founded in Cambridge in 1992 by MacArthur Genius Award winner Angela Duckworth, the organization now serves over 750 middle and high school and college students across Cambridge, Boston, and Somerville through a Students Teaching Students model that accomplishes two missions at once: preparing low-income, first-generation students for college while training the next generation of teachers.
“The most common pushback I get is, ‘Oh, it’s school in the summer. I don’t want to do school in the summer,'” Fitsum recalls. “Breakthrough was so much more than that.”
Each summer, 150 Cambridge students learn from 36 Teaching Fellows in academically rigorous programs infused with spirit and genuine joy. There’s a spirit stick awarded daily to whoever best demonstrates Breakthrough’s core values of effective communication, creative problem solving, community membership, and persistence. Breakthrough supports over 400 Cambridge students throughout the year.
That blend of rigor and joy, academics and community, is what makes Breakthrough work. Students arrive as rising seventh graders and stay for ten years through three summers of intensive academics, then year-round programming through high school that includes college counseling, internship support, and regular check-ins.Breakthrough also provides support to students throughout their college experience.
Dr. Tamarah Davis oversees curriculum and instruction. When Teaching Fellow candidates ask for advice, she keeps it simple: “Be authentic. Be yourself.” Her philosophy goes deeper: “My way of supporting students is to take care of who’s in front of them”—the Teaching Fellows themselves. Before summer begins, Fellows go through two weeks of rigorous training with ongoing classroom observations and coaching. Over 70% pursue education careers. Some return for multiple summers, watching their students grow from seventh grade through graduation.
Co-Executive Director Oneda Horne is clear about why the model works: representation matters. Research shows that when students are taught at least once throughout their education by teachers with whom they share experiences, their academic achievement improves. For Oneda, who grew up in Boston Public Schools, Breakthrough’s commitment to representation made joining the organization “an immediate no brainer.”
The organization is what Oneda calls “feedback forward”—staff apply Teaching Fellow feedback from morning workshops as quickly as the next day. The high expectations are one of Breakthrough’s core values. Dr. Tam is “a stickler” for being on time. Staff address conflicts in real time. “If and when there’s a conflict, we need to talk about it respectfully, because as a community, we all have to be here and work together,” she says.
But high expectations come with high support. Co-Executive Director Jennifer Stange is emphatic: “You can’t just have high expectations and expect teachers and students to meet them. There has to be a path to know how to achieve that expectation.”
Zihaam Jama, now a senior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and one of two student members of the Cambridge School Committee, started at Breakthrough in sixth grade. Three of her older siblings had gone through the program. She remembers summer showcases in the cafeteria where kids cheered her on during games. “They slowly helped me grow into the person that I am, and I’m really grateful for that,” she says.
That confidence carried through. Breakthrough gave her a boost toward independence, helping her apply to internships, sending resources about opportunities, checking in regularly. “They’ve offered me a lot, not just in the stages of growing into a person, but along the way as well.” Now Shannon Ferguson is helping her navigate the college process. She knows where to go when she needs help. She knows people are paying attention.
Jennifer, who worked in schools before Breakthrough, was drawn to the dual mission: both direct student impact and systemic impact through building a diverse teacher pipeline. “What keeps me staying at Breakthrough is really the joy, the magic, the spirit,” she says. “There’s so much celebrating of each individual student and the strengths that they bring.”
The work is hard. “We fill gaps,” Dr. Tam says simply. “We bridge gaps.”
The need is still there after more than 30 years. The barriers facing low-income students, first-generation students, students of color remain. Breakthrough exists to counter low expectations, to provide resources and information that are inaccessible, to build relationships that last beyond a single summer or a single school year.
When Fitsum responded to Shannon’s text within 24 hours, when Zihaam talks about Breakthrough as a second home, when Teaching Fellows return summer after summer, that’s the work showing up in real life. Those are the moments that make Oneda emotional: knowing that staff are “creating beautiful moments that are making long term, transformative impacts in students’ lives.”
The students come back because they know someone’s paying attention. The Teaching Fellows come back because they can see the growth. The staff stay because, as Jennifer puts it, “those connections that you see between our students, our teaching fellows, our students and our staff, it’s just a really deep, positive, caring relationship.”
That’s what ten years of high expectations and high support looks like. That’s what happens when you fill the gaps.
