Since 2013, CCI has hired between 10 and 20 north Tulsa teens (StreetLeaders) as part-time employees in the Crossover Kids After School Program and Summer Day Camp to work as tutors and mentors for our elementary-age students.
The StreetLeader Program is designed to provide teens from at-risk communities with real world job experience. The job skills of CCI’s StreetLeaders are refined through daily coaching sessions and monthly performance evaluations. In the latter, the StreetLeaders are given feedback on their general job skills, positive attitude, enthusiasm and initiative, supervising and caring for students, tutoring, and support of our teachers in the program.
As the name of the program indicates, we also expect our StreetLeaders to be leaders in north Tulsa. We challenge our StreetLeaders to use their influence and leadership abilities to make positive changes in the lives of our elementary-age kids, other StreetLeaders, and friends at school and in their neighborhoods.
The StreetLeader Program also incentivizes and supports high academic achievement. While high school students applying for a job as a StreetLeader do not have to have exceptional grades to get into the program, once they are in the program, they cannot have any grade beneath a “C” during a semester. If they have a failing grade in a class, they have to take a semester off to get their grades up before being allowed to reapply for a position in the program. We track our StreetLeaders’ grades through the semesters and seek to provide them support, including connecting StreetLeaders to tutors in subjects in which they are struggling.
Ultimately, our hope is that the teens from our community will be equipped through the StreetLeader Program with the job skills, leadership and academic abilities, and heart to lead in our community as adults. Moreover, we hope that some of our elementary school kids will look up to our StreetLeaders and become StreetLeaders who are passionate about tutoring and mentoring the kids who come after them.