Service – FAO Schwarz Fellowship

July 8, 2026 In Service

The Power of Pollinator Gardens: Building Community Through Conservation Action

When I applied for and accepted my role as an FAO Schwarz Fellow with Audubon Mid-Atlantic, I did so with one major goal in mind: connect people with nature and each other by collectively caring for their shared green spaces. I saw–and still see–my role as an educator to be building students’ and community members’ appreciation for and knowledge of the ecosystems around them in the hopes they will take active steps to care for those ecosystems.

As my Fellowship comes to a close, I am reflecting on the most effective steps I took to achieve this goal and one project stands out as most exemplary of the community building power of conservation action: School-based Pollinator Garden transformations. Not only did these programs give students and participants an ongoing space to explore and connect with nature, but also brought them together through a shared goal of improving their local habitats for humans and wildlife alike.

The Gideon Garder stands as a physical representation of the care that the wider school community has contributed.

Last Spring, with the support of Audubon Mid-Atlantic’s Delaware River Watershed Program team, school staff, students and local volunteer organizations, I installed a pollinator garden at both Dr. Ethel Allen School and Edward Gideon School. Following installation, I activated and maintained the spaces by moving many lessons this year outside and hosting weekly after-school Garden club meetings with 2-8th graders at Gideon.

During these lessons and club meetings, students learned about the benefits of native plants for pollinating insects and birds by observing and documenting changes in the garden, as well as caring for the space by watering, weeding, and working on creative beautification projects. In so doing, the students not only built a sense of belonging and responsibility to their environment, but also to their fellow students and school community with whom they collaborated with to care for the garden.

Beyond just beautifying the garden and improving the habitat for birds and pollinators, Garden Club gives students a space to just be themselves outside–making friends and finding the activities and topics that interest them most.

Parents, local organizations, and volunteer groups like the Philly City Repair Project and the Rooted North Tree Tenders joined the students by contributing materials and volunteer effort to over 10 Garden Workdays throughout my two years. These days were crucial in tackling major garden projects like planting and watering over 150 new herbaceous plants, 2 Native PawPaw trees, and 8 street trees.

This year, we collaborated with the Philly City Repair Project for the second time on their Philly Village Building Convergence–a volunteer day where current and former teachers and students alongside local tree tenders and community garden leaders painted stones for, built, and planted a new garden bed.

None of this would have been possible without the support from the Gideon school community itself especially Community School Coordinator Greg Wright (Alumni FAO Schwarz Fellow, The Food Trust ‘13) and Ms. Mitchell (7/8th grade teacher) who not only helped lead Garden Club and Garden Worknights, but also believed in the value of my work from day one and encouraged students and parents to trust me.

Through all of our combined efforts, the Gideon Garden has become more than simply a habitat for birds and pollinators, or a decoration for the school—it stands as a physical representation of the care that the wider school community has contributed and serves as an ongoing catalyst for building connections between students, teachers, and families and the land that sustains them.

Looking ahead, it is gratifying to know I can lean on the partnerships I’ve built with local organizations and volunteer groups to coordinate ongoing care for the Garden so it can continue to serve as a space of gathering and education for students for years to come.

Julie Kleaver

Julie (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at Audubon Mid-Atlantic in Philadelphia.

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June 29, 2026 In Service, Social Impact, Special Projects

Rooted in the Work: Two Years of Transformation and Growth

I am extremely grateful for these past 2 years. There has been so much change, transformation, reflection, and growth in my life during this time, and the Fellowship has been the foundation for this. While my work hasn’t always looked like what I thought it might, I can proudly say that I truly have learned so much, and it certainly hasn’t always been easy. At times, it felt that I may not have been doing as good a job as I could have, especially because much of my work involved me creating my own material. This taught me a lot and I soon found myself feeling more confident in myself and my work.

I am excited to carry everything I’ve learned and experienced in this Fellowship with me as I continue to move through life.

In addition to nutrition education, I was in charge of creating and facilitating student leadership groups, guiding them in two year-long food justice projects. I met with students on a weekly basis at two different schools, doing a mix of classroom activities and hands-on gardening. The goal was to provide students with the skills and vocabulary to expand their understanding of our food system, its history, the inequalities that exist within it, and their own positionalities. The students from both schools recognized that their surrounding community is food insecure, and that they have the power to address this through gardening.

This work resulted in an end of the year gathering that I planned and led. This convening brought together the groups from both schools where they had the chance to meet one another, share their work, and discuss their experiences. I also invited several Food Trust Staff who asked questions for the students and participated in activities. There were also high school students from an Environmental Management School who shared about future opportunities and the younger students were very engaged.The students did an excellent job presenting their projects and working together. They shared successes, challenges, and ideas about what farm to school can look like.

During the summer, I had the opportunity to take part in the farmers market season. This was some of my favorite work that I have done at The Food Trust. Myself–along with a team of other nutrition educators and farmers market employees–would go to our weekly farmers markets and provide programming at these different sites. We partner with local PA farmers so that they can sell their produce to low-income/food insecure areas through SNAP, WIC checks, and Food Bucks-which we distribute through lessons that we do at the markets. I was the Chef Educator, so each week I would make a recipe while helping to facilitate the nutrition education lesson. We would see anywhere from 100-200 people throughout the day, with upwards of 50 people participating at once.

Being a part of the management and leadership team of the PA Farm to School Network, I was very involved in the work that is carried out. I wrote our monthly newsletter, blog posts, and success stories. In addition to this, I was the point person for our National Farm to School Month efforts, helped with community outreach and created materials in support of passing the Keystone Fresh Act, lead one of our three working groups, planned and facilitated two of our quarterly open houses, and was leading our push to get more youth involved in the network through the creation of a youth council. While this council didn’t come to fruition, I helped create a strong foundation for future efforts.

Now, nearing the end of the program, and thinking about what lies ahead, I am happy to be feeling very grounded and at peace. I am moving back to Pittsburgh in July, where I know I will continue to devote my time, love, and energy to food justice and farming. I recently heard back that I got a position as a Farmers Market Site Attendant with Pittsburgh Parks and Recreation. I am excited to do work that will allow me to be outside using my hands, growing food, and caring for the earth. And I am excited to carry everything I’ve learned and experienced in this Fellowship with me as I continue to move through life.

Michael Varlotta

Michael (he/him) was the FAO Schwarz Fellow at The Food Trust in Philadelphia.

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June 25, 2026 In Service, Social Impact

From Conversation, to Concept, to Creating

“Hi everyone, I’m Ms. Raeva, and I have one question for you: do you know what’s behind me?”

I motion to the rain garden in the F. Amedee Bregy Elementary schoolyard in South Philadelphia. At this point in the year, the garden is green, lush, and full of plants and flowers huddled together. The sun is beaming down on me and the Bregy students I’m speaking to, and their hands shoot up to answer my question.

A chorus of “trees!” “grass!” “plants!” starts, followed by “a garden!”

I then describe what a rain garden is, including how it functions like a sponge during heavy rainfall to prevent flooding and how it helps filter pollutants from stormwater runoff. I explain how the garden is filled with natural elements to observe, and I start handing out nature journaling worksheets I designed a few weeks earlier. Students can draw and write what they see, hear, and notice in the rain garden.

Across the schoolyard, another group of students sits in a circle on the artificial turf, reading Backpack Explorer: On the Nature Trail: What Will You Find? They pass around leaves and flowers from their surroundings, look up at the clouds above them, and read some passages while outside.

The Nature Walk/Literacy Outside event at Bregy is underway, and amidst the excited exclamations from students spotting a butterfly, I take a moment to reflect on how we got here.

In September 2025, I planted myself in the Bregy Elementary hallway at the Trust for Public Land table during their Back-to-School Night. Their schoolyard project had been completed in 2023, so tabling at these events was a great way to meet members of the school community and stay connected with administrators and staff. As students and guardians walked by our table, collecting swag and sharing thoughts about their schoolyard, I took note of the other organizations tabling around us.

At that point, I had been in my Fellowship for about two months, and with each schoolyard I visited and each partner I met, my mind was swimming with ideas for how to energize and engage community members with their schoolyard in ways that embed stewardship into their format.

That mindset, paired with being surrounded by partners at Bregy, led me to walk a few feet over to the table next to ours called Curricula for the Community. As I talked to Gianni Johnson, the person leading the nonprofit, I learned that Curricula for the Community focuses on building an appreciation for literacy both at school and at home. Almost immediately, I saw a direct connection: fostering a love of literacy by using the schoolyard as a learning tool. I pitched the idea of pairing a nature-related book with nature journaling in the schoolyard, in which students would read outside, observe the natural environment around them, and even use their schoolyard as a space to create.

Through that initial conversation, the seeds of this event were planted.

From there, the metaphorical “watering” took the form of follow-up meetings with Gianni, discussing logistics, determining a date, choosing the book, looping in the Bregy principal and other members of the TPL team, and finalizing the nature journal worksheet design, goals, and structure of the event. Additionally, a few 8th-grade student leaders were designated as co-facilitators and helped clean up the schoolyard a few weeks beforehand.

Eight months after that first conversation, I was watching students get to know their rain garden by taking notes and drawing what they could see, hear, and feel. The K-3rd grade students drew flowers they saw in the rain garden, the 4th-6th graders wrote about what they could hear, and the 7th-8th graders took their observations further by creating poems and drawings about how being in nature made them feel. They even held a competition at the end, listening to poems their peers had written and cheering on the two favorites.

The purpose of this event was to get students out into their schoolyard and to engage with it in a meaningful way–to use it as a place to learn, to draw inspiration from, to connect with, and ultimately to care for. Nine grades, around 200 students, and countless drawings and creations later, that purpose had been achieved.

This event experience fortified that one of the many beauties about a schoolyard, or any green space–as I’ve come to realize through other engagements in my Fellowship work and the TPL Community Schoolyards program–is that the possibilities in which it can be used as a tool for learning, or even as simply a third space for creativity to take flight, are truly endless.

And it all began with a conversation.

Raeva Bali

Raeva (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at the Trust for Public Land in Philadelphia.

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March 27, 2026 In Beyond the Fellowship, Cohort, Service, Special Projects

My Fellowship Experience: Recap from a Second-Year Fellow

You’ll hear this from the second-year Fellows a lot, but time truly does fly by. I’m writing this blog post with just five months before I say goodbye to Reading Partners and the Fellowship. While I’m sad to leave a place that has helped me grow so much, I’m excited to be pursuing law school—a gnawing, decade-long interest that I finally committed to after the first year of my Fellowship.

Unsurprisingly, applying to law school proved to be a grueling process, but it offered plenty of opportunity for reflection, and I’m excited to share some takeaways from my time as a Fellow.

As I prepare to transition from the Fellowship back to school, I bring lessons learned about my own capabilities and new relationships.

I’m originally from Los Angeles. I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, and moved across the country to New York City for the Fellowship. I work at Reading Partners, an early literacy organization that serves students in grades kindergarten through fourth grade that are reading behind grade level. Traditionally, we partner with schools across the city to tutor students during the school day, but my strategic project involves leading our Collective Impact work, where we’re expanding our reach beyond the school setting. I train staff at other organizations on how to implement our curriculum in their afterschool programs and more. I also lead our family engagement work, co-facilitating literacy workshops and sharing resources for community members and caregivers interested in supporting children’s literacy outside of the classroom.

I’m on a small but mighty team of three, working directly under our executive director, and I’ve juggled a lot during my time as a Fellow. For a time, I managed all of our Collective Impact tutoring partnerships while concurrently working on a family engagement project with the Office of Family and Community Empowerment (FACE) under New York City’s Department of Education, reaching over 1,250 people across 37 community school districts.

Having a lot of responsibility and working closely with our Executive Director has been an incredibly rewarding experience, but I will say, it’s very different from what I expected coming into the Fellowship.

A couple weeks into the Fellowship, my manager, who had been spearheading this work, left Reading Partners. Suddenly, I went from receiving training to leading training for partners without much knowledge of what was going on. As a recent graduate starting my first full-time job, I jumped into my role and soon learned that I would be working directly under our Executive Director, which did not ease my nerves.

As uncertain of myself as I was, I felt grateful for the support of the Fellowship. Amid the transition, I spoke with the Fellowship Executive Director, Priscilla, and my alumni mentors, Gaby and Joe, who checked in with me and offered support and wisdom. I grew determined to take on each new responsibility as a growth opportunity. Embracing these new responsibilities with my manager’s departure allowed me to learn new skills and earn my team’s trust.

Leaning into the Fellowship also meant finding important lessons in our Fellowship retreats. Fellows work at a variety of organizations with very different missions. Whether they’re focused on food justice, environmental conservation, or art, the retreats provide Fellows with opportunities to share our work with each other and talk about the ups and downs of our experiences. Having this insight is what makes being a part of this cohort so valuable.

As I prepare to transition from the Fellowship back to school, I bring lessons learned about my own capabilities and new relationships. Good luck to all who’ve applied to be part of the next cohort of Fellows. I hope you grow as much from the Fellowship experience as I have!

Jacob Jeong

Jacob (he/him) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at Reading Partners in New York City.

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February 11, 2026 In Service, Social Impact

What’s in a Dream Board: Visualizing Stewardship in Philadelphia Community Schoolyards

“We’re dream-boarding here.”

I find myself saying this often with my team’s Stewardship Program Manager, Dan, in our weekly check-in meetings. These meetings usually follow a predictable structure: sharing project updates, reviewing timelines, and following up after community engagements. Still, there are moments when we drift from that cadence into more unstructured conversation, where creativity starts to bloom. When we begin tossing ideas around, when the discussion moves faster than I can scribble in my notebook, and when there are more question marks than periods on the page… that’s where dream-boarding begins. As my Fellowship has progressed, I’ve begun to view “dream-boarding” as a middle-ground concept between brainstorming and a vision board—ideas that are abstract, yet grounded in clear end goals.

The people I have spoken with... exemplify what it means to dream big and move boldly toward those goals.

As the FAO Schwarz Fellow with Trust for Public Land (TPL) in Philadelphia, my role is focused on stewardship and engagement at our Community Schoolyards, which are projects that transform asphalt surfaces into vibrant green spaces for students to grow, play, and learn in. To date, we have fifteen schoolyards completed across the city. With that, stewardship becomes essential to ensuring these schoolyards remain vibrant and well-engaged spaces. But with such an array of schoolyards across the city, it becomes essential to make space to dream-board how we connect with our school communities, identify their stewardship needs, and translate that understanding into action.

If meetings are where dream-boarding is planted, getting out into the field is where it grows. In the earlier stages of my Fellowship in August and September 2025, I toured all our Community Schoolyards to gain familiarity with the neighborhoods they are in. I also represented TPL at several back-to-school events during this time, where I was able to connect more directly with community members at their schoolyards. At our table, we invited people to respond to a prompt written on a bag: “What activities do you want to see in your schoolyard?” Students and families walked up, grabbed a sticky note, and dream-boarded themselves as they dropped their responses into the bag. Answers ranged from activities focused on trees, art, soccer, and many more ideas. These sticky notes were not just responses; they revealed how each community wanted to engage with their schoolyards and further shaped my dream-boarding process at the same time.

Later in the fall, our team led a Community Day of Service with WSFS Bank, one of TPL Philadelphia’s corporate donors. During this volunteer-led event, WSFS employees came together at Taggart Elementary’s schoolyard to spread three yards of mulch, plant more than forty perennial plants in the raingarden, and collect trash from the schoolyard’s perimeter. While we were physically stewarding the space to keep it vibrant and healthy for students and neighbors, it was also meaningful to see volunteers joke, talk, and get to know one another as they worked toward a shared goal.

This event highlighted how stewardship and engagement at our Community Schoolyards is meant to underscore the community aspect just as much as the stewardship itself. With every perennial they planted, volunteers were planting connections too. Once again, I found myself dream-boarding about what future volunteer-led events could look like and how I could prioritize building community through them.

Keeping with this “dream” theme, this January I traveled to James Logan Elementary School, the site of one of our upcoming schoolyards, to attend a Community Partner Meeting. Not only was this meeting energizing because I connected with other partners involved with the school, but also because of a portion of the agenda called the “Community Builder.” In this group discussion, we were asked to consider what a “dream” is, what it means, what you do with a dream, and even what our organization’s dream might be.

It was inspiring to hear how other partners defined a dream and to see how our different interpretations found common ground. My group’s reflections could be summarized this way: a dream is a positive visualization you act upon. It can be a launching pad or a goal you work backward from to achieve. This experience created space for me to step back, revisit my “why” in this Fellowship, and reflect on my own projects through that lens.

As an organization overall, I have found that this concept of dream boarding is embedded in TPL’s work. It shows up in how we explore what it means to connect people to the outdoors and the different paths we can take to get there. The people I have spoken with, both across the organization and within the Philadelphia team, exemplify what it means to dream big and move boldly toward those goals.

While I have learned so much in my Fellowship and look forward to what lies ahead, one theme has become clear: making space to dream up projects and initiatives, especially collaboratively, is essential.

And then, what do you do with a dream board?

You bring it to life.

Raeva Bali

Raeva (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at the Trust for Public Land in Philadelphia.

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February 3, 2026 In Service, Special Projects

Conservation Action in Every Season: It Starts with Seeds

Throughout the course of my Fellowship, I’ve found that the most engaging and fulfilling lessons and public programs are the ones where students or participants can have a hands-on, positive impact on their surrounding environment. Whether it’s making their own native seed balls or tending a garden, directly contributing to restoring ecosystems reinforces in-class education and allows participants to more deeply connect with nature.

Instead of dreading winter, I now see it as an opportunity—the chance to step back and call on students and communities to imagine what a more vibrant, healthier ecosystem could look like.

So, when I began the planning process for this year’s lessons and public programs, I was struck with a problem as old as the sun’s rotation around the Earth: the winter. For 3-4 months every year, the vibrant cycles of life go dormant. Outdoor activities, let alone hands-on stewardship, are simply not practical. How could I still engage students and program audiences in activities that directly improve the environment?

I had to take inspiration from those same natural cycles. Many native seeds, the kinds most beneficial to native birds, insects, and wildlife, need to go through a months-long period of freezing in order to germinate come springtime. If I could find a way to engage students and event attendees in activities that highlight and nurture this part of the seed’s growth cycle, I could provide opportunities for hands-on environmental restoration all winter long.

It started in the fall when native plants began to dry out and drop their seeds. I planned a lesson at two partner schools, where we learned about the growth cycle by identifying these plants in the pollinator gardens we had planted outside their schools during the previous spring, and collecting some of their seeds.

I also planned an event in my Nature Journaling series, where participants used their journals to explore and document which native flowers in our Pollinator Meadow were at the end of their growth cycle, and learned how to harvest and save their seeds for future plantings at the Discovery Center.

These events were great for the fall, but soon the winter weather took outdoor activities off the table entirely. Luckily, I could use these native seeds’ natural need for the cold to lead students and event attendees through the process of starting these seeds in plastic milk jugs and placing them outside to germinate. The milk jug acts as a sort of green house to keep seeds moist. Using this method, we could start seeds as early as January for the following spring.

With this inspiration, reached out to Audubon-Mid Atlantic’s Delaware River Watershed team—our resident experts on native plants and conservation. Together, we planned a series of seed-focused events at the Discovery Center where the “Seed Stewards” (as I’ve dubbed event participants) guide native seeds through their entire growth cycle: from seed packet filling, to seed starting, to planting.

We had our first event on Saturday, January 10th, where the Seed Stewards prepared nearly 250 packets of native seeds to be distributed through our Native Seed Library where visitors can plant them in their own neighborhoods. There were so many people excited to join, that we had to increase maximum registration from 20 to 30 and even then, a few people ended up on the wait list. I’m looking forward to our next event where the Seed Stewards will learn how to use the milk jug method to start their own native seedlings to take home.

In addition to this, the milk jug method is a great way to engage students in hands-on stewardship no matter the weather. I recently started some native seeds this way with the Garden Club at Edward Gideon School.The students were excited to choose the type of native seeds they would grow and have their own jug to take care of. In addition to labeling her jug with the name of the seed inside, one student, an 8th grader named Kyaira, decorated her jug with floral designs and vowed to check on it every day.

These seedlings will be planted in their pollinator garden during club meetings and worknights this spring—further increasing students’ sense of responsibility to and belonging within the natural environment around them.

Through the promotion of native seeds and plants, these lessons and events engage students and attendees in the process of expanding biodiversity and restoring native habitats in their own neighborhoods—no matter the weather.

Instead of dreading winter, I now see it as an opportunity—the chance to take a step back and call on students and communities to collectively imagine what a more vibrant, healthy ecosystem could look like for all the birds, insects, wildlife, and people that call it home. This all starts with a simple seed.

Julie Kleaver

Julie (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at Audubon Mid-Atlantic in Philadelphia.

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January 27, 2026 In Alumni, Mentorship, Service, Social Impact

Building a Career Through Service, Strategy, and Mentorship: The Unique Value of the FAO Schwarz Fellowship

A cornerstone of the FAO Schwarz Fellowship is the combination of direct service work, strategic projects, and mentorship. Looking back on my Fellowship experience years later, I have reflected on how these key elements have had a positive impact on my career.

I currently work at uAspire, an organization focused on college affordability and financial aid utilizing multiple approaches: advising students, training practitioners, advocating for policy changes, and creating custom solutions through consulting projects.

As a Fellow, my direct service work was advising students on college and financial aid. My strategic project work included supporting other areas of the organization: I did research about changing financial aid policies, supported with grant writing, and helped develop new trainings to expand the knowledge of my fellow advisors.

My career trajectory at uAspire started with my FAO Schwarz Fellowship, and progressed into program and people management, followed by data and curriculum management, and now, managing evaluation and learning. The Fellowship prepared me for the various roles I’ve held at uAspire over the last 10 years by:

1. Providing a positive environment for a “yes” mentality

Fellowship roles sometimes fill the space in a nonprofit of the “I wish we had time to take on this important new work” stream of work. This means you can really thrive if you’re a person who likes to say “yes, how can I help with that?”. The FAO Schwarz Fellowship helped me build the confidence to lead projects and identify the opportunities to take a project even further.

This mentality led me to want to learn more about data and Salesforce in my early roles at uAspire when I saw opportunities to improve the program for students through data/technology. Building my data skills early positioned me well to take on my Director of Data & Impact role and my current role as Senior Director of Learning & Evaluation.

2. Grounding my perspective in direct service work

While overseeing uAspire’s advising curriculum, I spearheaded the founding of the organization’s first-ever Student Advisory Group. My experience as an advisor doing direct service work helped spark the idea to start this group; I knew firsthand how students would have great ideas about how we could improve the advising program. Furthermore, the skills I gained as an advisor explaining FAFSA and other complex financial aid policies helped me be a strong facilitator of the group.

For this project, instead of explaining financial aid, I was explaining key decision points so that students could give input to improve program strategy. This foundation in direct service work, which I developed through the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, has proven to be critical for so many elements of my work.

3. Building my skills in mentorship

One way to contribute to a nonprofit is to support staff who may be more junior to you. The FAO Schwarz Fellowship centers mentorship as part of the experience, both providing Fellows with multiple mentors, but also allowing Fellows in their second year to mentor and support first-year Fellows. Therefore, mentorship was a skill I was able to establish and build early on. This allowed me to be successful as I stepped into people and team management for the first time.

This focus on mentorship has also shaped how I lead evaluation and learning work; one thing I always prioritize is training and supporting staff who are interested in growing their skills in data and evaluation. One example is through leading Salesforce training – this has both been fun for me, and allowed staff to feel more confident utilizing data as a resource, resulting in tangible impacts to the organization.

Lately, I have been reflecting on my career as I’ve reached the 10 year milestone at uAspire. I have been lucky to have had many people support me throughout my career journey, and I’m especially grateful for the FAO Schwarz Fellowship which offered me such a strong foundation early in my career.

Karen Wilber

Karen (she/her) is the Senior Director of Learning & Evaluation at uAspire and was an FAO Schwarz Fellow at uAspire from 2016-2018.

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January 20, 2026 In Day in the Life, Service, Special Projects

Early Alarms, Small Groups, Big Impact: A Day in the Life of a Fellow at Boston Collegiate

Getting started

Normally I would say that my day starts bright and early, except it is pitch black when I wake up at 6 am. I’m out the door by 6:40 and walk to the T station, and I commute about 45 minutes to get to school by 7:30 in the morning. Sometimes, I have the pleasure of running into my friends who I work with on the train, while other times, I read or catch up on a news podcast. It’s pretty cold in Boston during this time of year, so my 10 minute walk from the T to school gives me time to wake up in the fresh air as the sun rises over the cityscape before me.

As I enter the double doors of the school, Boston Collegiate Charter School, an administrator on door duty greets me. I then head to my desk in our shared instructional leadership team office and settle in. I eat my meal prepped breakfast while I catch up on emails, check my calendar, prepare for my classes for the day, and make any necessary copies. Then my day as an FAO Schwarz Fellow really begins.

Monday through Wednesday

My direct service work, half of my role as a Fellow, is teaching small-group literacy interventions to students, mostly high schoolers. Mondays are fairly light for me as I don’t teach any small pull-out groups. I have check-ins, other meetings, and professional development, but I spend most of Mondays working on my strategic project or Fellowship initiatives. My strategic project, the other half of what I do in the Fellowship, is documenting and disseminating best practices in education at our school in partnership with our school leadership or communications teams.

Tuesday through Friday, I teach a small-group literacy intervention during the second block of the day. I work with high schoolers in groups of three to six, working on content-specific science and social studies textbooks with a set, scripted curriculum. This targeted and structured literacy intervention (called REWARDS) works to help fill in any gaps these students have. I see each of my five high school small groups twice a week. Tuesday and Wednesday are fairly light with only one group meeting each day. After I teach my first block of the day, I have a break where I do some more prep, and then I walk over to our lower school campus, which is 15 minutes away. It’s a great way to step outside, get some Vitamin D, and break up my day.

I arrive at the lower school during 5th grade recess, and I am always greeted by shrieks and 10 year olds running up to me screaming “hi Ms. Hemley!” with big smiles, eager to show me their cool new earrings or tell me about how their hockey team won a tournament over the weekend. The energy is very different from our other campus as the kids are much younger, and you can see it in their bubbly cheeriness.

After engaging with the fifth graders,I head to my classroom and set up. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I teach an entire advisory class of nineteen 5th graders. I use the same literacy intervention as with the high schoolers, but at a lower level. Rather than sitting in a small room together around a table the way I do in the high school, at the lower school, I am up and presenting at the front of a big classroom. After our hour together, I pack up and put on my winter gear as I prepare to walk back to the upper campus. By the time I arrive, it is almost 1pm and so I have my lunch.

After lunch, I am free for the rest of the afternoon. This is when I will focus on my strategic project. Sometimes this entails writing or conducting research at my desk, but often, it means I am going from class to class to observe the different teachers and their best practices. Oftentimes I will observe the same teacher for a whole week, if not more. This is helpful to really get to know a teacher’s practice in-depth, and to follow a lesson all the way through its instruction.

Then, at 2:45, school is dismissed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have door duty at the high school. I hold the door and greet students as they leave the building. I take this as a great opportunity to mingle with students, learn their names, and work on building relationships outside of the classroom. By the time the last few students are trickling out, it’s 3pm, and I typically only have 30 minutes left of the day. With those 30 minutes, I will often finish up whatever it was I was working on before heading out for the day.

Thursday and Friday

The second half of the week looks a little different, however. Thursday and Friday are my back-to-back busy days. Like Tuesday and Wednesday, I start my morning with my first literacy group of the day. However, I then have two more right after that until a little after 11:20. From there, I run to the middle school side of the building where I supervise a 7th grade FOCUS block, a structured and self-directed enrichment time for middle school students. They either work on math or reading through an independent and asynchronous computer program, similar to what you might see on Khan Academy.

When FOCUS is over at around 12:15, I then quickly run back to my office to heat up my lunch and then run back to my small group classroom where I host a small lunch group with some of my students and their friends. It’s nothing structured, just a safe space for students who may feel overwhelmed by the large cafeteria while also providing some social time with an adult. After chatting with my students, the bell rings to signal that lunch is over at 12:51, and the students who I don’t teach filter out, while the students who I do teach filter in. At that point, I teach my last literacy block of the day until around 1:45. From there, I can finally head back to my desk and finish up any tasks or projects I have going on. If it’s a Thursday, I have a new teacher meeting from 3:30-4:30. Otherwise, on Fridays, (and some Thursdays), I’m out the door at 3:30.

The rest of the afternoon

Although my job requires me to wake up at dawn, the benefit is that I am often done with work almost two hours before most people. That means I have the free time in the afternoon to do things and have hobbies. So often I will take the T straight to Harvard Square and hit the bouldering gym while it is still empty. By the time I leave around 6-6:30, many people have just arrived. I then head home and eat dinner, study for the LSAT, read some more, and get ready for bed before I hit the hay at 10pm so I am well rested to do it all over again the next day.

While a repetitive, early, and structured schedule is definitely an adjustment from college, it has been incredibly interesting to adapt to this new lifestyle. Not only am I getting used to it, but I am taking full advantage of all the free time it allows me to have in the afternoon. I was never able to have hobbies outside of school and my extracurriculars. Now, I am able to partake in activities just for fun!

Furthermore, while this day in the life provides a snapshot into what a typical day might include, the fun part of working at a school is that you can never really predict what a day will bring! Overall, the reward is worth the early alarm. I’m learning about work-life balance and I have the opportunity for structure and boundaries in a way I never had before in the chaotic business of college.

Shoshanna Hemley

Shoshanna (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at Boston Collegiate Charter School in Boston, MA.

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January 2, 2026 In Beyond the Fellowship, Mentorship, Service

Once a Mentee, Now Helping to Lead the Change

Once a Mentee…

I still remember what it felt like to be part of iMentor as a mentee when I was in high school. I answered some questionnaires and received notice a few weeks later that I’d been matched. For the first event, I sat next to my mentor, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I was excited, but mostly nervous, since meeting new people can be scary sometimes, especially as an introvert. Though, when I think back, these worries were from being unsure if someone I’d just met could really understand me or what I wanted for my future. But what started as an awkward introduction turned to us competing with other pairs to build the highest marshmallow towers with the support of dried spaghetti, and most of all, to one of the most meaningful relationships of my life.

Mentorship is more than a program; it’s a movement. It’s about creating cycles of support and empowerment that ripple outward.

Through my time as a mentee, I learned that mentorship isn’t just about giving advice or trying to meet deadlines — it’s about building meaningful connections and being seen. My mentor continually encouraged me, asked thought-provoking questions, and helped me stay grounded.

Whether I was navigating college applications, managing imposter syndrome, or figuring out who I wanted to be, my mentor was there. My mentor was passionate about education, while I wanted to major in computer science — which I found early on in college wasn’t my passion — so I changed my major to psychology and data science. However, she still helped me find great programs, practice interview questions, improve my resume, asked me about my day, and I built confidence in conversational skills.

As a first-generation student, my family and friends’ knowledge of the college process was limited. However, my mentor was prepared to answer questions I had or help me figure out the answers, and reassured me of my goals.

That experience shaped me in ways I didn’t fully realize at the time. It taught me that change happens through relationships, and that the support of one person can make all the difference.

Now a Fellow…

When I learned about the FAO Schwarz Fellowship, I remember an iMentor staff member told my class about this opportunity in my senior year of high school. I found the email, visited the website and excitedly saw iMentor as one of the hosts organizations. I had always admired iMentor’s mission to plant the importance of mentorship to students and prepare them for after they graduate. The idea of coming back to that same organization in a leadership role felt like a full-circle moment. In my application, I talked of my story, reflecting on how mentorship had shaped my values and commitment to service.

At the time I received my offer from iMentor, I was stressing about an exam, but once I saw the subject line of the email, “Congrats – you’ve been selected as an iMentor’s FAO Schwarz Fellow!”…I completely forgot about the exam. I was overwhelmed by a mix of gratitude and disbelief: the same organization that once supported me was now trusting me to help lead change for others.

Supporting Students as a Fellow…

As an FAO Schwarz Fellow with iMentor, I support high school students as they navigate the same challenges I once faced. Whether it’s encouraging them to work on their goals, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and networking, or simply checking in on how they’re doing. I remember a student asking me to read over their personal statement and share some advice; I gladly said yes, and their story was beautiful, highlighting what mattered most to them—the value of family. Moments like this remind me that while I can see pieces of my younger self in some students, I also see their uniqueness.

I bring a unique perspective and understanding of what it feels like to be a mentee to my Fellowship, while also entering a leadership role and learning how to guide and empower others. I’ve had to check-in with myself and remember I was once a teen (like most of us!), thinking I knew it all, but quickly realizing that I needed support in planning my future pathway and building confidence in my decisions. So each time I share my story, it reminds me of the impact mentorship can have, not just on students’ academic journeys, but on their confidence and sense of purpose.

Looking Ahead…

When I think about my journey — from being a mentee to now serving students through iMentor — I’m reminded that mentorship is more than a program; it’s a movement. It’s about creating cycles of support and empowerment that ripple outward.

I’m grateful for my mentor, for the opportunities that shaped my path, and for the chance to give back through the FAO Schwarz Fellowship. My hope is that the students I work with will one day look back on their own journeys and see how far they’ve come — maybe even stepping into roles like mine, or becoming a mentor themselves!

Deb Camacho

Deb (she/her) is the FAO Schwarz Fellow at iMentor in New York City.

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