It was an amazing Pep Rally at Heritage College-Ready Academy High School.  The entire student body was cheering, dancing, enjoying the food, and doing all of that with cohesion new to the campus planned by leaders new to their roles.

The purpose was to launch students into a successful week of final exams.  The organizers were thirty students who just a few months ago would have been the last to be involved in such an event. 

“The success of that January Pep Rally was an important signal that Project TOOLS was already effective,” recalls Brian Ines, Heritage’s Counselor. Project TOOLS is a specialized service designed to develop leadership among students who haven’t shown any traditional leadership potential. “Project TOOLS chooses teens with negative attitudes, poor grades, and bad behavior,” according to Herbert Romero, creator of the program. “We want to refocus them away from trouble and toward their potential.”

Thirty Heritage students were selected after Winter Break to form a Project TOOLS group that now meets weekly during school. The agenda is conversation. “We focus on strengths, not deficiencies, about what is a leader, about opportunities they’ve never been offered,” says Mr. Romero. He adds that he understands how hard it is to grow up in an urban neighborhood. He did it. “The kids know that and begin to open up. It doesn’t take long for new attitudes to follow,” he adds.  The Pep Rally is an example of that.

The students proposed it as a way to motivate all Heritage students to do well on final exams. They made a poster encouraging students to study, made all Rally arrangements, even found donors for the food. “They were leaders, and the rest of us enjoyed the results,” says Mr. Ines.  The Project TOOLS members continue to show signs of changing attitudes including improved grades. And other students are now asking to join the group.  This unique project is also being introduced at College-Ready Academy High School 7 this term.