(doorbell chiming, record scratch) ♪ ♪ SAM: I remember when I first started teaching seven years ago I was getting my hair cut on the other side of the city.

And the barber asks me what my deal is, where I'm from, I mentioned that I just moved to Atlanta because I got a job teaching at Towers High School.

And I'm looking in the mirror and he spins me around to look him in the face.

And he says, "You're teaching at Towers?

You don't want to teach at Towers."

♪ ♪ The fact that we have such different circumstances within the public education system in the same country... is appalling.

And it just didn't sit well with me.

These were bright kids.

I was expecting that they were going to continue on to college or continue on to some sort of post-secondary training.

But I saw them continuing on to minimum-wage jobs.

Because they didn't see what examples were out there for them, they didn't see the opportunities that existed.

♪ ♪ School counselors are incredibly overworked.

There just often isn't time to help kids make it to and through college.

♪ ♪ My kids just didn't know what was out there.

So we took them on a college trip to visit eight schools in five days over spring break.

MICHAEL: I think the students that it helps the most are the students who feel like, like me, they feel like they want to go to college, they know they want to go to college it's just figuring out where.

I want to major in physics with a minor in philosophy possibly, because some of my idols are, like, Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.

♪ ♪ SAM: The graduation rate here has steadily climbed in recent years I think in part, as a result of students seeing high school as just checking a box on the way to the ultimate goal.

College Aim students are now on almost 100 campuses across the country, and that's been really wonderful to see.

For me, going to college wasn't just this thing.

I needed it, because we didn't have anything.

When we moved to America, my dad had zero dollars.

It wasn't a game for me, and it shouldn't be a game for any of you all.

If you think you can do it, you most definitely can.

But if you think you can't, then what's going to happen?

You can't.

SAM: To see Jody graduating magna cum laude from Spelman but able to relate that much more with our students is incredible.

♪ ♪ There's some serious progress here at Towers, but there are so many kids who I work with on a daily basis who could use another year, who could use a little bit more time because, quite frankly, the public education system isn't preparing kids to be successful at the next level.

And I look at the circumstances that a lot of my kids kind of thrive through, and they're asked to do so much more.

During the school day, they're taking a few A.P.

classes, they're working really hard, and they're trying to learn and then they leave school and then they go to a job where they work until midnight.

and then they get home, and they have to do their homework.

And then they wake up four hours later, and they do it all over again.

I have a number of kids who are living those types of lives on a daily basis and I think, "How are you possibly keeping this up?"

♪ ♪ Some sort of mental health break to gain some sense of stability would be really valuable.

AMBER: The academic piece of college is important, right?

Making sure that we got them prepared for the emotional side, but that leadership piece is important.

- It's really cool you're giving students opportunities to then take that to the next level.

So not just, "What do I need to do to get in?"

but "What do I need to do to be successful once I'm there?"

♪ ♪ When I tell folks that I run a gap year program, usually the first response is, "Oh, so do they go off to Europe and kind of, like..." you know?

Because in America we think of gap years as something for privileged folks to, kind of have a year to hang out and have fun before you have to go to the real world, right?

So for a long time, gap years have been out of reach for a lot of students who really could get the most value of that.

♪ ♪ We know that first-gen and low-income students are less prepared for college.

So then why is the narrative seamless enrollment?

Why don't we give them the opportunity to be prepared when they go to college?

♪ ♪ Most students don't know what they want to do after high school yet.

Until like... probably when they get to, like, the end of senior year, and now they're trying to figure out what are you going to do.

I knew I didn't want to go to school like right after high school, so I wanted to take a break and just kind of do school, but not really... And also help me with getting into college.

♪ ♪ AMBER: At Leap Year, we take the hard road, because going to college is hard by itself, going to college as a first-gen student or coming from a low-income community is even harder, right?

And I think that we do students a disservice when we're not really honest and really clear about that.

I network with people around the world.

Like mappers, coders... and admins who want to create games and stuff.

Being active is important too.

Making sure that you're actively, consistently working towards your goal, right?

Not just, like, one day a week, right, but every day.

For the first 18 years of your life its a lot of folks kind of telling you what you need to do and figuring out how to solve problems for you.

And the leadership opportunities that community service provides gives students a chance to actually know that, "Okay, this is going to be better because of me."

So they're going to spend 20 hours a week doing the college readiness work, and also 20 hours a week of community service as elementary school reading coaches.

When I'm volunteering, I believe that it helps people, like, know that someone cares about them and someone cares about the situation they're in.

As we working for our scholarships, and as we're working to get into college we're also learning skills of our own, our self story.

AMBER: It's just super empowering to have students realize that it doesn't have to be the world acting on them, right?

They can have major influence and impact in the world.

♪ ♪ Our low-income and first-gen students also deserve the opportunity to have all of the resources that they need to be successful in college.

And if their parents can't provide that, at least Leap Year can try to fill in some of those gaps.

♪ ♪ SAM: An extra year where they have intense, close conversations around the academic preparation, the financial preparation, social preparation, the servant leadership that's necessary to be successful in this world is absolutely incredible.

I wish I could send every student through a program like that.

AMBER: I think if every high school graduate did a year service across the country our entire country would look stronger as a result of it.

I would love to see a mandatory year, or years even, of service.

AMBER: So many more students would have the opportunity to go to school prepared and go to school as a stronger leader.

So I think, you know, ten, 15 years later we would be looking at a different country.

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