Skill mastery involves a music and photography program. In peer support for good behavior , mentors deal with students in small groups and small classes working together as a unit requiring coordination and good behavior for all activity to succeed. Generalization to academic performance is integrated into the mentoring through explicit activities that require written and oral presentations. Bridging across the community and institutions involves taking students out of the relative isolation of their home environments and opening new opportunities through field trips to regional historic sites, cultural events and historically black colleges and universities. Parental involvement is initially gained through the signed contract of consent required for the child's participation and is consolidated by individual parental interviews, parental assistance in supervising the field trips, parental participation in local programs and parental engagement in correlated health promotion studies.
Teachers meet together weekly in small groups with an expert teacher-facilitator.
Parental Mentoring and Engagement , consists of a series of 10 weekly meetings with parents of children involved in the intervention program. Parents are introduced to the programs being offered to their children to enhance their engagement and parents are also offered comparable courses to follow a similar pattern of engagement. To conduct a formative evaluation that provides information that supports the development of procedures and protocols that will strengthen the Boston Cares program. To conduct a process evaluation that explores the extent to which the key barriers to successful implementation were identified and addresses. To conduct an outcome evaluation that compares treatment and control subjects on measures of intermediate and ultimate outcomes.