As I reflect on the word ‘impact,’ my mind moves to the surface of the moon, a literal reflection of impacts. I would venture to say that it was easier to map the surface of the moon than it would be to truly map Peer Power’s impact on the learning and lives of tens of thousands of students, their Success Coaches, and the Memphis community.
The moon has between one and two million impact craters, and Peer Power has provided nearly 1.5 million tutoring and mentoring hours in the past 20 years. More than 99% of the moon’s surface has been mapped. Over about 8 years, 3 Lunar rangers took more than 17,000 pictures, then orbiters collected data to figure out how they all fit together. Since then, AI has filled in some of the gaps. If we think about the year books filled with the pictures of the more than 19,000 students who attended the 14 schools we served only last year, the pictures of Peer Power’s impacts have already outnumbered the amount it took to map the moon.
The moon has between 6-7,000 large (>20 km) craters and Peer Power served about the same number of students daily last year. Those impacts were made by 148 success coaches who learned from their experience in the classroom, which is reflected in the development of career readiness soft skills and the average 5 year graduation rate of 83%. More than 90 Success Coaches have become professional educators.
The academic impact on our scholars is clear. Here are some of the outcomes we’ve measured over the years. We have found that the number of A and B grades of the students we serve increases from Q1 to Q4. The TCAP average percentage of scholars who met or exceeded proficiency over the past 3 years outpaced the district percentage in every subject Peer Power supports. In 2022-2023, 92% of courses we served showed growth in the projected to actual level of student proficiency.
With our metaphor of the moon we’ve ascended into the heavens, but I’d like to bring us back down to earth for a minute. It’s easy to track impacts on the moon because there is no movement. It is frozen in time. In fact, the footprint of the astronauts are still there. And the impacts are silent because there is no sound in space.
Down here, our footsteps last for a moment and disappear with the cycles of nature, wind and water, animals and insects, growth and blossoming. One might say that in all this constant change, a meteor’s impact, or even a footstep, usually gets integrated into the earth. We can’t just look on the surface and see the impact of our work. It’s ingrained, into ‘aha’ moments, opportunities opened, decisions made, in interconnected lives and future pathways. We can hear the sound of the impact any time a student, teacher or Coach shares a story of success.
We can highlight academic outcomes, but Peer Power’s impact can’t be completely counted like craters, or measured, or mapped. It lives within us as we grow and change. We empower our scholars and Success Coaches to shoot for the moon while building a better world.