Mark Hecker

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2011

Mark Hecker

Reach Incorporated

http://www.reachincorporated.org/

Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

Bold Idea: “Flip the script” on traditional literacy programs by hiring and training struggling high-school students to tutor younger children, improving educational outcomes for both groups.

Organization: Using a three-pronged approach—training, tutoring, and compensation—Reach Incorporated provides struggling high school readers with the opportunity to improve their reading skills through teaching. Two days each week, our tutors prepare lesson plans. On two alternating days, they tutor 2nd and 3rd grade students. Tutors are paid a stipend for their participation, and they are able to address academic skill gaps—“ their own and their students”—in an affirming and empowering environment.

Biography:

Moment of Obligation: When I was a social worker in Washington, D.C., my clients regularly faced obstacles created by their lack of a high-quality education. These clients—adolescents with behavior or emotional challenges—often made great personal progress only to face an education system that acted as if they were already too late to help. Watching my clients become defeated by this negativity, I knew we needed a system in which all young people are not condemned based on past performance, but held to the same level of expectation as everyone else.

Book every social entrepreneur should read: Drive by Dan Pink

Favorite Quote: "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." -Stephen Grellet