DREAM CATCHERS INC
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Mission Statement
DreamCatchers is a free, after-school program for low-income middle school students in the Palo Alto Unified School District. Our mission is to close the opportunity gap by helping students thrive in school. Our students are primarily from Spanish-speaking families without a college education. Each of our students is paired with a one-on-one, near-peer volunteer from a local high school or Stanford in a year-long, personalized tutoring relationship. We provide support that our students cannot access at home due to limited resources, focusing on math, homework, study skills and STEM enrichment. We maintain regular contact with our students’ teachers in order to tailor our program to our students. Middle school is a critical time. Our parents often lose contact with school during this transition period. DreamCatchers steps in to strengthen the school-home connection, working closely with parents to help them connect with teachers and counselors.
About This Cause
DreamCatchers’ mission is to close the opportunity gap in academic and social support faced by low-income, historically underrepresented middle school students in the high-performing Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD). Our students are primarily from Spanish-speaking households with parents who were often unable to graduate from high school, much less college. Our students include a mix of Voluntary Transfer Program (VTP) students from East Palo Alto and Palo Alto residents from a number of affordable housing options. Although many community-based programs target East Palo Alto residents, DreamCatchers is one of the very few, if not the only one, to serve a significant number of low-income students who live in Palo Alto. Founded in 2008, DreamCatchers has provided over 30,000 hours of academic support through 2017. Fully enrolled for 2017-18 and with a growing waitlist, we provide our students with a three-year commitment to buoy them through the critical middle school years. We focus on homework, study skills and academic enrichment through personalized, year-long tutor and mentor relationships that pair each of our students with a near-peer volunteer tutor from Stanford or one of our local high schools or colleges. Capitalizing on a staff of professional, bilingual/bicultural educators, we serve as a critical bridge between home and school for our students and their families. DreamCatchers provides what social scientists refer to as a “third space” where students who straddle two very different worlds (i.e., home and school) can come together and feel comfortable, confident, and supported. We work closely with classroom teachers and guidance counselors throughout the year in order to capitalize on the rich resources of the district and to understand the individual needs of our students, whether academic, social or emotional. We also maintain regular contact with our parents for the same purpose. In particular, DreamCatchers is unique because of our targeted, individualized approach. We create a customized academic plan for each student. We are able to develop these plans due in part to our access to our students’ teachers, counselors, school assignments and grades. We pinpoint our students’ strengths and weaknesses, recognizing where they are faltering and where we can build on their successes. In only our second year of providing Individualized Academic Plans, our objective is to further strengthen this approach by integrating the team -- family, teachers, counselors, and DreamCatchers professional staff and volunteer tutors -- that stands behind every student. We incorporate all of the knowledge we accrue about each student into an Individual Academic Plan and update our individual student profiles in real time with a constant flow of easily accessible information. We have stepped in to connect home and school to a core of DreamCatchers one-on-one tutors and professional staff to ensure that after-school support is specifically directed to benefit each of our students. It is a complex web of support, and it varies by student and family. In a district where low-income students lag significantly behind their peers in academic achievement, we envision a future where these students will stand shoulder to shoulder with their classmates at the starting gate of high school – feeling academically, emotionally and socially prepared and motivated for four years of school during which they will develop the competence and confidence to make meaningful post-secondary choices, including successful completion of a four-year college degree program.