Jalessa Mungin
In 2003, Jalessa was in the sixth grade at her neighborhood school in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. She was a good student and had hopes of one day being the first in her family to go to college, although she wasn’t sure how she would get there. In her middle school, classrooms went without books, and even without teachers. Her neighborhood high school had one of the worst four-year graduation rates in Philadelphia last year at 36%.
One day in sixth grade a Site Director from Breakthrough entered Jalessa’s classroom and spoke about a program that helped students get into the city’s top high schools, and into college. While she wasn’t excited about committing her free time to writing essays, studying physics, and doing two hours of homework on summer nights, she applied to the program, was accepted, and began her studies the summer before 7th grade.
Jalessa recalls the energy and passion that her teachers brought to the classroom, and how, for the first time, she was intellectually challenged and socially engaged. With assistance from Breakthrough, Jalessa and her family applied to Germantown Friends School where she was accepted as a Community Scholar. In 10th grade, she became a Breakthrough teacher (one of the youngest ever), helping to inspire and mentor other students like her. Now in her freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, Jalessa said “I could never have done all this without Breakthrough.”
