City Year as a Mentorship Multiplier
At City Year, we know, and , that mentorship can change lives and improve long-term outcomes for young people.
Mentoring students is a big part of what City Year AmeriCorps members do as student success coaches, becoming an additional trusted adult in school who can help students learn, grow and develop.
And mentorship with City Year can also reach beyond the classroom. City Year’s alumni community is a powerful network for young adults who are exploring college and career options and aren’t sure what path to take. Alums can also be a source of inspiration to serve with City Year.
Meet Dr. Rachel Teague, a City Year alum (New Hampshire’06) and Josh Corey, a current City Year New Hampshire AmeriCorps member They how they met and the impact of Rachel’s mentorship on Josh with City Year’s podcast, Why We Matter.
Service with City Year helps young people find a major and pay for college
Rachel joined City Year New Hampshire at the age of 18, after her initial college plans fell through and she was unsure about her next steps.
She regards her year of service as one of the most transformative years of her life and credits the experience as helping her to figure out her college major and her career. It sparked an interest in education as a career.
Did you know that nearly half of City Year’s alumni report they currently work in the education sector, as teachers, counselors, administrators, in education policy or at education nonprofits? Learn more about the impact of our 40,000 alums.
After her service, she was able to use her Segal Education Award to chip away, slowly but surely, at classes at a local community college.
While Rachel began earning credits, she was able to obtain jobs in afterschool programs and as a classroom assistant, thanks to her service in Ƶ with City Year. As it turned out, Rachel found that she had even more hands-on experience in classrooms as her friends graduating from college as teachers with degrees.
“The experience and the foundation that I had built because of my experience with City Year really gave me that leg up above other candidates because I had the hands-on experience in classrooms,” Rachel says.
“I had some more of the maturity that other candidates didn’t have because I had already been in the workforce for years before some of my peers.”
Ultimately, Rachel was able to earn her bachelor’s degree over the course of 10 years.
Serving with City Year can ‘catapult your career’
Now, after her unique path of earning a bachelor’s degree in education, a master’s degree in management and leadership, and a doctorate in education, Rachel is a knowledge-management consultant, TedX speaker and academic coach.
Rachel says her City Year experience catapulted her career, allowing her to put all the pieces together: to still work in higher education, volunteer with youth, and help people learn. Her time mentoring has led to a career in mentorship.
Did you know that 84% of City Year alums say their service experience helped them decide on a career path? A 2024 Ƶ Cornell study explores more the workforce ready skills City Year alums sharpen during a year of service and why community engagement is important to them.
Just as important to Rachel is her ongoing role as a mentor.
“I think that the power of mentorship extends far beyond City Year. City Year is a great starting point for mentoring relationships,” Rachel says.
“And, you know, I think that I learned how to be a mentor at my core through my service here. I’ve been able to utilize a lot of those skills, throughout all of the relationships, in every facet of my life. I use it in my consulting business; I use it in teaching; I use it as a parent; I use it everywhere.”
The ripple effect of mentoring: Helping the next generation
Rachel and Josh met during Summer of 2022 between his freshman and sophomore years through a mutual friend when Josh was working on online summer courses – something he hadn’t done before as a traditional campus student – when he found he needed some ‘human contact’ to help guide him through.
During their conversations, Rachel instantly related to Josh’s sentiment about how difficult it can be to gather real-life experiences in certain fields.
When Rachel talked about her City Year service, she talked about how she used her year of service to help reposition her life and figure out what she wanted to do next. Rachel’s story inspired Josh to also consider serving with City Year.
He joined City Year New Hampshire last summer and currently serves in Parkside Middle School in Manchester, NH.
“City Year has given me leadership opportunities and skills that I can use for myself to push through that wall that I was facing when Rachel and I met,” Josh says.
“Since then, I’ve worked with so many people who have given me so much…and it’s all thanks to Rachel has really pushed me in the direction that I’ve wanted to go.”
Today, Josh aspires to be a social worker. His mom is a therapist, and he’s always had an interest in the field but found it hard to get hands-on experience working with children in Ƶ, which made City Year an even more perfect fit.
“I’m at the point that I am now in my life, all because of Rachel, if it wasn’t for her, I’d probably still be pushing through that wall and trying to get through it somehow magically,” Josh says.
“She has really been my City Year in the sense of, I was at a point where I didn’t really have that direction. I’m a little bit older than some of my fellow corps members, but she’s really been that kind of role model and mentor of breaking everything down and offering that structure that I needed at the time.
“And that’s really been like a blueprint of how I’m trying to model, how I’m showing up for my students.”
Building a mentoring network
Mentorship has been so central to Rachel and Josh’s development and learning, they plan to continue mentoring more young people, and hope to strengthen networks of City Year alumni.
“One thing that I’m really excited to keep seeing is the continued value and power of mentorship beyond the service year with City Year,” Rachel says. “It’d be really great to be able to see alumni like me, and future alumni like Josh, being able to stay in touch and continue to mentor other alumni afterwards. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a network where we’d able to continually like scaffold our mentorship and have it continue so just that power right there would be such an amazing network to fall back on, like almost like a giant web.”
Mentoring benefits both the mentor and the mentee.
“I’m thankful for the mentoring relationship that I have with Josh,” Rachel says. “I owe just as much to him. I’ve learned a lot from my time with him.”
