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The Three Pillars:
Academic Tutoring, Standardized Test Tutoring, and One-on-One College Advisement.
P.A.C.E students consistently end their high school years in the top 5% of their class and very often our students are Valedictorians. One aspect of our success is rigorous academic tutoring. All P.A.C.E rehearsals begin with the students coming together to complete their homework. While this is going on, there is an in-house tutor lending support to the students who need it, and catching students up on topics they may not have fully understood while in class. Moreover, the students also work together to help one another and ensure that everyone is caught up in their classwork. This function helps our students stay at the top of their class so that when it is time to apply for college the students will have impressive GPAs and class rankings. Furthermore, throughout the year, P.A.C.E staff and student leaders hold the other students accountable by talking to teachers, principals, and evaluating report cards when necessary. The P.A.C.E program takes education seriously, and we work hard to ensure every student graduates with many post highschool options to choose from.
Inspire
P.A.C.E travels throughout the country for various reasons. There are often performances and workshops that invite the P.A.C.E program to attend. While traveling P.A.C.E makes stops at different colleges, universities, and professional workplaces to give students exposure to different areas of life that they once were not aware of. By doing this, we inspire our students to consider different career Paths and see different facets of life that they wouldn’t mind being a part of or making a difference in.
This not only gets the students thinking about the future, but it also gives them an incentive not to drop out of high school. A majority of career paths require students to at least finish high school. Once the students have a general goal in mind, they tend to take actions leading to that goal and will not compromise them as long as they have people supporting that goal.
Finally, inspiring the students plays a large role in pushing the students to be the best. When young people choose a goal they tend to be ambitious goals that require one to stand out from the pact. P.A.C.E does not discourage ambitious goals such as creating billion-dollar businesses or becoming famous performers. Rather we encourage it and have our students research what it takes to achieve their goal. As the students push to their goal they unconsciously shoot above their peers, which places them in a great position post-high school even if they fall short of their goals.
Artistic Cultivation
What sets P.A.C.E above your standard mentorship program is that it is an arts education program as well. This is the true key to the success of P.A.C.E. Most mentorship programs in Camden have not seen a fraction of the success P.A.C.E has, and we strongly believe it is because they are missing this piece or something like it. The arts function of P.A.C.E serves to close the achievement gap in 4 ways:
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Music increases academic performance
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The arts provide a reason for the students to gather
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The arts can reveal a student’s hidden potential
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The arts create an authentic, strong bond between everyone in the program, a bond that is the core of the success of the program