I distinctly remember my high school experience with guidance counselors, and it wasn’t good.

Unfortunately, my experience isn’t unique. I haven’t met a single person who remembers his or her high school guidance counseling as being effective. In a lot of cases, however, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Consider these grim statistics:

• Costs $100,000 per student for K-12 public education ... BUT only $80 per student spent on career guidance
  

• Over 500 students per high school guidance counselor
  

• High school students receive less than 3 hours of career counseling over 4 years
  

• 16,000,000 U.S. kids need a mentor
  

When I was a second grade bilingual teacher, the most effective tool I had was getting kids out of the classroom. As soon as they stepped out the door, they were learning. Partly based on this realization, and because I saw firsthand the disparities between high- and low-income kids, I knew I had to do something. So, equipped with education-related experience as a Spanish bilingual teacher in Los Angeles, a volunteer in several inner-city Boston charter schools, and as the Brooklyn field rep for the New York City Board of Education, I decided to ditch my full-time job and start icouldbe.org.

icouldbe.org mentors the next generation through the Internet. icouldbe.org is an award-winning 501(c)3 non-profit that steers underserved teens toward careers they never imagined and toward their futures - by linking teens electronically to mentors in a wide range of careers. Through corporate partnerships, school and non-profit alliances, and individual members, icouldbe.org has served over 5,000 at-risk teens in fourteen states and 90 schools with 2,500 nationally recruited e-mentors.

“Educate” comes from the Latin “educare,” meaning to “lead out.” icouldbe.org leads teens out of their small, all too often isolating worlds to imagine a big world of many possibilities and to take steps to actualize within that larger world. Thank you for considering helping icouldbe.org help teens around the country realize their futures!

Adam Aberman
Founder of icouldbe.org