Student Spotlight: Jazmine Terrell

9th grader Jazmine Terrell is in her first year at Noble Street College Prep and she’s loving it. She’s been spending much of her free time practicing and performing with the cheerleading team at her school, where they root on the Noble St Golden Tigers basketball, football and soccer teams. As much as Jazmine has been challenging herself with her involvement in cheerleading, she and her tutor Jen Nolan have been working together to ensure she thrives in her challenging academic environment as well.

Jasmine and Jen, a lawyer working at the Civic Federation, a non-partisan government watchdog organization, have been working together this entire year to bring Jasmine’s grades up, and they’ve had great success! According to Jasmine, since working with Jen, she has been “working harder, asking more questions in class when I don’t get something and coming in early for help when I need it.” Jasmine has also been attending her school's “Homework Fiesta”, which is something akin to a University professor’s office hours. Here she can get one-on-one homework help with her teachers as well as connect with other students to master her coursework.

Jasmine started here after her tutoring program ended at the YMCA. She heard about our program through friends from the neighborhood and upon coming, realized she knew more kids from the neighborhood than she thought.
Throughout the year so far, Jasmine has developed a great relationship with her mentor, Jen. Jasmine says: “Everything’s been going great, we can talk about anything. I tell her everything ‘cause I know I can trust her. She encourages me and gets me to keep a positive attitude.” Jasmine continues: “Without Jen and this program, I’d still be getting straight C’s.”

Jasmine has benefited from her relationship with Jen in other ways as well. For instance, although Jasmine isn’t exactly sure what she wants to do when she grows up, she knows it will have something to do with law. Here, Jen has been able to share her own experiences with law school and the law with Jasmine so that she can have a better idea of what a career in law would be like, which has only further encouraged Jasmine to follow her dreams of becoming a lawyer. Go for it Jasmine! We’re rooting for you!