Dear Friends,
On behalf of our entire TEAK community, we write to express our gratitude for your support in 2017 and over the last two decades as we celebrate our 20th Anniversary. What follows is a tribute to the profound impact you are having on a Fellowship dedicated to serving our City’s most motivated young scholars who share our vision for their lives that includes a top tier education and an opportunity to make a disproportionate impact on the underserved communities in which they find themselves.
For TEAK Fellows to make that impact, TEAK Staff are aware that we must maintain our commitment to evaluate and improve our programming to ensure the best possible experience for each Fellow and their family. In 2017, for example, TEAK Staff established Core Values of Scholarship, Citizenship, Leadership, and Fellowship. These four values — our “ships” are now serving as organizing principles that drive all of our programming decisions. Staff have reimagined key aspects of the TEAK experience, such as the McKinzie Summer of Service program. We now provide a Leadership course in the eighth grade to teach students how to thoughtfully and purposely effect positive change in their communities. Most significantly, we have rewritten TEAK’s “Standards and Expectations” to align with these “ships” to better support our shared goal of providing each Fellow with the opportunity to achieve her/his full potential as a scholar, citizen, leader, and fellow.
In 2017, TEAK once again had outstanding outcomes from the high school and college admissions process. A record number of students (over half) matriculated to Ivy League institutions and all of our 8th grade Fellows found homes at competitive high schools and are thriving in their new environments. Perhaps with equal or even more significance, TEAK Fellows will graduate from college with little to no debt further removing barriers to future success. Our College Scholars reported an average GPA of 3.4 after their first semester and landed internships in finance, medicine, law, the arts, and social justice.
TEAK continues to address the challenges facing our Fellows. In response to the reality that more and more of our scholars reside further from TEAK’s office on 16 West 22nd Street than ever before, TEAK partnered with Packer Collegiate and Fordham Prep to host weekday classes during the academic year in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Teaching our Fellows in their neighborhoods has reduced commuting time for our youngest Fellows to-and-from TEAK programming, provided better preparation for secondary schools by increasing instructional time, and encouraged more parents to permit their children to apply to the program.
Our relentless focus on the quality of the Fellowship has brought us to another question: can we provide the same TEAK experience to more deserving scholars across the city? Based on the progress we have made in 2017 and years past, and the excellence that TEAK represents, the answer is a resounding yes. In 2017, TEAK has set the stage for its most ambitious goal yet—to grow the program by 15 Fellows in each Class beginning in 2019. This will result in a 50% growth in our program over the next decade!
We are proud of our service and contributions to our Fellows and their families over 20 years but do not rest on our laurels. We, instead, continue to refine our efforts to help our Fellows and more aspiring young adults find ways to make their dreams come true. Thanks to you, TEAK remains on the move.
With heartfelt appreciation,
John F. Green
Executive Director
Marc Becker
Chair