In this issue:

Middle School Academy Highlights
Tennis & Fitness News
Blazing a Path to Tenacity
College Acceptance List for 2017
Post-Secondary Student Profiles
Building Community Through AmeriCorps
Tenacity Awarded $100,000 Grant
Citrix Volunteers Tame Summer Supplies
Tenacity Marathon Team
2017 Show Your Tenacity Gala
Serving Up Tennis to Elementary Students
Summer in the City

Middle School Academy Highlights

Annual 8th Grade Retreat

8th grade students, along with Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellows Teirra Anderson and David Acuna, made their way around Boston during a citywide scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt was one of many fun and educational activities offered at the 8th Grade Retreat this year.

Spring was a busy time for the Middle School Academy (MSA) team. In late April the MSA team collaborated with the College Prep and Post-Secondary Services (PSS) teams to host the annual 8th Grade Retreat. This year’s Retreat brought over 30 of our 8th graders together for two full days of cohort building and bonding. One of the goals of the retreat each year is to help prepare students for a successful transition to high school. With that goal in mind, one of the activities this year was a citywide scavenger hunt. The objectives of the hunt were to get students out into Boston, visit a college, locate one or two high schools, find a Tenacity Summer Tennis & Reading Program related site, identify and visit important College Prep/PSS venues, navigate the MBTA, and visit historic landmarks. The experience was meant to be both fun and educational while honing skills and building awareness that will help students on their way to success in high school.

End of Year Celebrations

In a nod to the “Picture Your Future” theme at the Umana End of Year Celebration, students and their families enjoyed matching baby pictures to present day students and staff.

Following our successful 8th Grade Retreat, we entered our season of End of Year Celebrations. Our sites exceeded expectations and provided joyful and celebratory experiences for students and families while incorporating themes ranging from Identity to Wimbledon. In the process of gathering feedback from families on the impact of our program on the lives of their children, we received many accolades, including: “Keep doing what you are doing!! Tenacity’s staff/team has made a positive impact on my son’s life” and “Very thankful for all the attention and support to my daughters while in the program.”

Literacy League Continues to Capture Hearts and Minds

Tenacity students and staff work on compositions at the magnetic poetry station during the final Literacy League.

For the fourth and final Literacy League event of the school year, over 30 students from across all six Tenacity Middle School Academy sites had an enriching experience celebrating bilingualism and learning about different languages through poetry and dialogue. As has been the case with Literacy League throughout the year, it is nothing short of inspiring to bear witness to youth who are independently opting into meaningful and engaging literacy experiences at 4:00 on Friday afternoons.

Exam School Admissions Increase

This academic year, there was a nearly 15% increase in the number of Tenacity 8th graders accepted to exam schools. Boston’s exam schools, Boston Latin Academy, Boston Latin School and the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, are selective public high schools that aim to meet the needs of academically talented students. Exam schools offer rigorous academics and a focus on high achievement.

A New Captain Takes the Helm at McCormack Middle School

Doug McNicol is taking on a new role as the Site Director at the McCormack Middle School.

We are delighted to share that Doug McNicol, who has been building Tenacity’s academic program at the Washington Irving Middle School for the past two years, has been promoted to Site Director of the McCormack Middle School. Doug completed his master’s degree in Secondary English Curriculum and Instruction at Boston College and holds a B.A. in English from Saint Joseph’s University. Prior to joining Tenacity, Doug taught at Cristo Rey High School in Dorchester and served as a College and Career Instructor for College Bound. We have great confidence that Doug’s leadership will continue our progress at the McCormack!

Tennis & Fitness News

The Crane Cup Closes Out the Middle School Tennis League Season

By: Haley Hunt, Tenacity Intern and Special Correspondent

Jubilant players from the Mary E. Curley K-8 School celebrate winning the 2017 Crane Cup.

The eleventh annual Crane Cup Championship took place on May 19th at Harvard University’s Murr Center. Teams from all six Tenacity middle school programs put on a dazzling performance. Above the courts, the viewing gallery was abuzz with excitement as parents, fellow students, and teachers waved posters and called out support to the athletes below.

As the 2016-2017 regular season champions and three-peat Staniar Open victors, the Mary E. Curley Flying Lions entered the event as heavy favorites. At the end of round robin play the team championship hung in the balance. It came down to the Umana, who had three finalists out of four flights and the Curley who had the same. It was a nail biter, but in the end Team Curley edged out Team Umana to take home the 2017 Crane Cup. The tournament’s namesake and former Tenacity staff member, Andy Crane, announced the winner and helped award the trophy. “I am blown away by the level of tennis I saw today,” said Crane, “many of you are better right now than a lot of the players on the high school teams here in Boston.” It was a great year for the Middle School Tennis League and we look forward to another wonderful ride in 2017-2018.

Familiar Face in a New Role

Zack Goodstein working with Summer Tennis & Reading Program participants at the advanced site in West Roxbury.

Zack Goodstein, who has played an important part in the Middle School Academy program at the Jackson Mann for the last two years, has assumed a new role as Tennis and Summer Operations Manager. Zack served as a Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellow in 2015-2016 followed by a year as the Family Engagement and Tennis Coordinator at the Jackson Mann. In his new role, Zack will be able to share his passion for tennis with a wide range of Pathway students. He will support the Middle School Academy tennis program and also take a leadership role with the College Prep high school tennis program. Zack will also play a major role in executing the Summer Tennis and Reading Program, including hiring staff, organizing permits and contracts, and managing equipment.

Expanding Tennis and Fitness Opportunities

Windridge has generously hosted Tenacity students every summer for over a decade.

A key part of Tenacity’s mission is to provide students with growth opportunities. This summer, 10 Tenacity students are attending immersive summer camps at no cost.

Five students are heading out to the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont to Windridge Tennis & Sports Camps. The “Windridge Experience” is centered on the belief that if children are encouraged to do well in areas that they enjoy, they will show positive personal growth. By providing a wide range of instruction in sports and an opportunity for supervised group living, Windridge is able to give campers the fundamentals they need for fulfilling their individual potentials. Within the Windridge community, youngsters discover the meaning of trust and respect for others, and are able to realize confidence in themselves. Kids leave with a sense of accomplishment, self-worth and memories that last a lifetime.

Camp Eagle Hill in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains in New York will be home to three Tenacity students for two weeks in August. Life Serve Youth Foundation, in partnership with Camp Eagle Hill, offers the first overnight tennis camp in the United States designed to offer exceptional training and personal development opportunities for youth with limited financial resources. The camp’s transformative experience is for passionate kids, aged 12 to 17, who have a demonstrated potential for tennis. A well-rounded program offering a variety of activities, including intensive tennis instruction, promotes participation, fun and opportunities for each camper to learn, grow and succeed.

Blazing a Path to Tenacity

From fighting fires in the Rockies to site leader at the Irving Middle School and member of the 2017 Tenacity Marathon Team, Tristan Norbert has blazed a unique path.

By Special Correspondent Jim Baldwin

Irving School Site Leader Tristan Norbert followed an unusual path to Tenacity’s door; a path that included management, leadership, and team building lessons that go far beyond the offerings of any normal graduate school degree program.

Following his graduation from the tranquil confines of Susquehanna University, Norbert was itching for some excitement in his life. “Susquehanna was beautiful,” Norbert reflected, “but there’s not a lot happening in the hills of central Pennsylvania.”

Hence he began an adventure that fortunately landed him at Tenacity. But there were several stops along the way, ranging from fighting fires in the Colorado Rockies for the US Forest Service to fighting educational poverty in Baltimore’s inner city. As divergent as these opportunities were, they all shared similar characteristics. They were challenging both emotionally and physically, they were certainly outside his comfort zone and they required him to learn about leadership and team building.

Somewhat ironically, Norbert’s adventures started with AmeriCorps, a service program which has become an important Tenacity partner. AmeriCorps had a program where participants assisted the US Forest Service with wildland firefighting, but qualifying for it was anything but easy. Training and qualifying would be challenging both physically and mentally…just what Norbert was looking for.

He admitted, “The physical part was difficult, and, honestly I wasn’t in the best of shape going into it. There was an extensive interview process, too, where I was questioned at length about my priorities and values, how I’d respond in emergency situations, how I defined flexibility, my experience with teamwork and what I thought it meant to be a good teammate. They selected only a few for the program, and I considered myself quite fortunate to be one of them.”

Norbert’s team operated out of a bunkhouse in the Colorado Rockies’ Pike National Forest working alongside the Forest Service firefighters. When they weren’t being called to a fire, they were cutting down trees, clearing the forest and doing other types of fire mitigation work.

“We got called to work many fires that season,” he recalled. “We even helicoptered to one fire. We didn’t rappel, but it was really exciting to be ferried by helicopter. I remember it just feeling like, ‘here I am a kid from the East coast being out here in the wild vastness of this landscape.’ It was inspiring.”

The experiences were so inspiring to Norbert that he spent three more years in the Rockies. In his second year, AmeriCorps made him a team leader responsible for training and supervising a group of inexperienced firefighters. After that AmeriCorps term, he joined the US Forest Service and was assigned to an elite “Hotshot” crew, the teams that are first to respond to fires.

Then he leveraged his experience into a position with a Denver nonprofit, The Mile High Youth Corps (MHYC), which got him on the community service road that would ultimately lead to Tenacity.

The MHYC’s mission was to prepare disadvantaged young men for job readiness, and it was Norbert’s job to lead them into the wilderness for two weeks at a time.

The combination of factors–urban young men, uncomfortable in the wild, wishing they were back in the city and operating, of all things, chain saws–required that Norbert learn quickly about discipline, leadership and team-building.

Norbert recalls the experience fondly. “A lot of them were not happy to be in the wild, but I had to build them into a team. When you have teams running chainsaws they have to be looking out for each other’s safety. We were all in this together. We were responsible for our piece of land, and we had a job to do. We needed to be systematic in the way we did it.”

It was a rich learning experience for him, too. “It was quite a challenge. I had to develop some real leadership skills. I had to build strong relationships and at the same time make it clear what my expectations were. I wasn’t out there just to be everyone’s friend. I was overseeing an entire group in uncomfortable circumstances and it was up to me to bring them all back with their limbs intact.”

While MHYC was rewarding, Norbert eventually left the wilderness of the Rockies for the wilds of Baltimore’s inner city, answering the call of community service, not to mention, literally, a call from his sister-in-law.

“Honestly, I thought I would never leave Colorado,” Norbert remembers. “I was young and living the dream. But my sister-in-law ran a residential program in Baltimore City called Boys Hope Girls Hope with the mission of guiding promising 4th and 5th graders in unstable home environments through high school and on to college. She asked me to be the residential (live-in) counselor, essentially running her program day-to-day. It was a pathway program like Tenacity’s.”

Initially, he decided to pass on the offer and called his sister-in-law to turn it down. Luckily, she didn’t answer her phone. By the time Norbert called again, he’d changed his mind. It seemed to him like another “out of the comfort zone” adventure so he “packed up my car again, drove across the country and moved into a home with six boys ranging from 6th to 12th grade.”

Norbert described it as some of the most difficult work he’s ever done. Being in the wild with inexperienced young men for two weeks is one thing. Being with these kids full time as a surrogate parent and teacher was quite another.

But he found it to be very rewarding as well. “Once the guys opened up to you and trusted you and believed in the program, it was so rewarding. To see how much they cared about you, how much we cared about them and how much you had to learn about them and their families….and to see the resiliency they developed. Like, nothing was going to stand in their way. It got to the point where it didn’t feel like work because it was just where we lived, and it felt like family. And they were safe to focus on their academics.”

Given all these prior experiences it seems almost inevitable that Norbert’s pathway would merge with Tenacity’s. But it took another woman in his life to be the catalyst.

He explains, “My fiancé got a job offer she couldn’t refuse in Boston, and I came with her. I actually stumbled on Tenacity, started as a part time tennis instructor and quickly realized there was a lot more to it. The fit seemed really right. I could easily see working with the kids given my residential experience in Baltimore, working on fire crews in Colorado and leading teams of kids out into the wild; it seemed like a nice, neat experience package that would fit well with Tenacity.”

And it has fit very well. Now in his 5th year with Tenacity, currently as the site leader at the Irving Middle School, he says, “I get a chance to recruit our kids in 5th and 6th grade and follow them through to the 8th. To see the maturity and progress that happens in those years is really remarkable.”

He continued, “Throughout my life I wanted to find jobs I just thought were cool and that I would really enjoy doing and get some meaning out of. As I reflect on all this, here’s what it comes down to. I want to work for organizations that I believe in and that I think are staying true to helping build stronger communities.”

Building Community Through AmeriCorps

Fellows Wow the Crowd at JFK’s 100th Birthday

Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellows sparkled in their roles as part of the JFK Service Honor Guard at the Centennial Dinner at the JFK Library.

A volunteer group of Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellows sparkled in their roles as part of the John F. Kennedy Service Honor Guard welcoming guests to the 2017 Centennial May Dinner at the JFK Library. They shook hands, shared high-fives, explained our mission and basically charmed everyone with their great enthusiasm. Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry, Joe Kennedy and David Letterman were among the guests who stopped to talk with the Fellows. The goal of the Service Honor Guard was to bring JFK’s ideals of service to life and Tenacity’s AmeriCorps Fellows exemplified those ideals with panache.

2017-2018 AmeriCorps Fellow Opportunities

The 2016-2017 Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellows take a break from a professional development workshop to capture a group photo.

Do you have a loved one or neighbor who graduated from college this spring? Or is there someone you know who is considering a career change and thinks education mixed with tennis and fitness might be a great next step? If so, this could be the perfect opportunity. We are seeking great people to fill our Tenacity AmeriCorps Fellow roles for 2017-18. If you are interested in learning more, or know someone else who might be, the best place to start is our website. Find a thorough overview and details about applying at: https://tenacity.org/americorps/. For more information, email: Apply2BFellow@tenacity.org.

Add Your Voice to the Movement to Save AmeriCorps

The $1 billion federal investment in AmeriCorps remains in jeopardy and if cut would eliminate the $4 billion return on investment that it yields. The AmeriCorps program was created in 1994 and engages more than 80,000 Americans in intensive public service each year. Since the program’s founding, more than 1 million AmeriCorps members have contributed roughly 1.4 billion hours of service across America while tackling critical needs in communities. Please contact your members of Congress today and urge them to protect funding for national service. A great resource is www.voicesforservice.org.

Citrix Volunteers Tame Summer Supplies

Volunteers from Citrix paused for a group photo after delivering organized supply bins to Summer Tennis & Reading Program sites.

By: Haley Hunt, Tenacity Intern and Special Correspondent

For the fourth year in a row, a wonderful team of Citrix volunteers helped us gear up for the summer by organizing supplies for our Summer Tennis & Reading Program (STRP).

This year a record breaking 29 Citrix volunteers worked together to create bins containing all of the necessary academic and tennis materials for each of the 23 summer sites. After assembling the bins, the volunteers traveled all over Boston to deliver them to the sites and also hung Tenacity banners on the courts.

Citrix volunteers sorted through materials to prepare supply bins for 23 summer program sites.

We are extremely grateful for Citrix’s dedication, enthusiasm, and service over the years. Without the hard work of these volunteers, Tenacity staff would have spent weeks working to compile, assign, and deliver the STRP supplies. The huge assist provided by team Citrix makes preparing to serve over 4,000 students in the summer program much less daunting.

Jason Pina has run and raised money for the Tenacity Marathon Team four times.

“The 2017 Boston Marathon was my 10th marathon overall and 4th Boston Marathon running for Tenacity. I work in higher education and Tenacity’s mission to help students maximize their potential in and out of the classroom matches my personal passion.”

Jason Pina

Emily Clark is greeted post race by one of her biggest fans.

“Running the Boston Marathon was amazing, but running on behalf of Tenacity really took the experience to a whole new level and made it that much better. Fundraising for Tenacity came easily after learning the ins and outs of this exceptional organization. They inspired me through training and continue to inspire me everyday.”

Emily Clark

Brittany Viola spots the Tenacity cheering section at mile 24 in Coolidge Corner.

“I’ve always loved challenging myself. After three knee surgeries, I never thought I’d be able to run a marathon, but when the opportunity presented itself, given my ties to Tenacity as a mentor at the Jackson Mann, I couldn’t pass it up. It’s a further accomplishment knowing that the money raised benefits the children of Tenacity.”

Brittany Viola

Terrific Results from the Tenacity Marathon Team

Sixteen runners on Tenacity’s Boston Marathon Official Charity Team successfully completed 26.2 miles in the unseasonably warm sun on Patriots’ Day and along the way raised over $115,000 to support Tenacity students on their Pathway to Post-Secondary Success. With the addition of Board supported matching funds, the total topped $163,000.

We are indebted to our entire team of runners for their steadfast commitment to training, fundraising and keeping Tenacity’s great work in their conversations and social media all year.

Congratulations to team member Jason Pina (pictured below with Caroline Lane) who returned to run for the Tenacity Marathon Team for the fourth time and has raised over $30,000 since 2013.

Special thanks to Tenacity Board member Caroline Lane for her leadership, to Stan Mescon for outfitting the team in New Balance gear, and to founding Tenacity board member Kitty Flather for generously hosting an elegant post-race celebration for team members at her home in Beacon Hill.

We also wish to express our sincere appreciation to the Boston Athletic Association for continuing to include Tenacity among its elite organizations in the Official Charity Program. Since 2013, over $695,000 has been raised for Tenacity’s Pathway programs by our marathon teams.

We hope that the Boston Athletic Association will select Tenacity to be a member of the Boston Marathon Official Charity Program again next year!

The 2017 Show Your Tenacity Gala

By coming together as a community at the 2017 Gala, we not only showed our tenacity, we showed that we believe in hope, we believe in dedication, and we believe in a better future. Most importantly, by celebrating and investing in the students served by Tenacity programs, we showed that we believe in their ability to soar.

Staff members Oneda Horne and Lindsey Herchel, along with Tenacity parent Zertina Mandrell and Tenacity college students Laura and Lorena Escolero, helped illustrate the powerful impact that Tenacity’s programs have on the lives of our students and families.

We are so grateful for the kind generosity expressed in multiple ways surrounding the gala. In total, nearly $700,000 was raised to support Tenacity’s vital mission.

Working together, we can challenge limits, provide opportunity, and offer unwavering support – helping the students we serve grow, learn, and find success in middle school, in high school, in college, and beyond.

Serving Up Tennis to Elementary Students

In May, Tenacity completed a school-year-long initiative to provide monthly tennis to 4th and 5th graders at six schools across Boston. The goal of the program is to build a recruitment pool of candidates for Tenacity’s Middle School Academy while providing valuable lessons in self-control and sportsmanship. Elementary Program students who find they love the games, camaraderie, and interaction with our staff are encouraged to join the Middle School Academy when they reach 6th grade.

Tennis + Reading = Active Bodies + Minds

We are gearing up for a great summer of helping kids keep fit and stay sharp with our free Summer Tennis & Reading Programs in Boston and Worcester. At 23 sites throughout Boston, volunteers and 125 staff – many of whom are either current Tenacity students or alumni – will help nearly 4,500 children and teenagers hone their literacy and tennis skills. In Worcester, five sites will serve 600 youth. These dynamic, educational programs help stem summer learning loss and build a love for tennis.