REAL increases the appeal of education and provides a positive outlook on the opportunities that come with it. We serve schools and students of all ages, along with sports teams, by providing workshops led by college student mentors. The workshops go in depth on topics ranging from life skills to social/emotional learning to financial literacy, etc.
The LeBron James Family Foundation and Dr. Devon Carter have targeted 28 school districts (high schools) across the country to improve attendance, behavior referrals and graduation rates. We believe education is the "heartbeat" of a community and improving the education there has the potential to improve the overall health of that community (economically, socially, etc.).
We are now of the mindset that these school-related variables are potential byproducts of the psychological safety, overall health and well-being of the students we work with.
In other words, partnering with faculty across Ohio State, we plan to administer specific qualitative surveys, questionnaires, etc. to investigate the hypothesis that REAL reduces stress by improving psychological safety, etc. which will ultimately improve attendance, behavior, etc.
In the 28 targeted locations we plan to work with, we'd like to establish a line of research (basic and applied) with faculty from the 28 universities we plan to work with to prioritize the unique psychological mechanisms (i.e., attitude change, identity, etc.) that contribute to these improvements; ultimately supporting the idea that the REAL mentorship program has the potential to improve these communities through psychology-specific publications and grant support.
Further, the incentive for universities to partner with us is the idea that college students who are on the "fringe" of dropout, etc. participate in the REAL program as mentors (trained via a freshman seminar or professional development style college course) will stay in college, potentially improving the retention data of each university we work with.