City Year Student Success Coaches Playbook
for Program Developers

This playbook has been developed by City Year and informed by learnings from the Student Success Coach Learning Network as a way to share lessons learned from years of developing and supporting student success coaches. It is not designed for those looking to partner with City Year directly. Rather, it is designed as a tool for schools or organizations looking to integrate student success coaches into a range of models beyond the City Year context.

1. Who are Student Success Coaches & What Do they Do? Explores the supports that student success coaches provide to young people.
2. Research & Evidence Behind Student Success Coaches: Dives into the evidence behind student success coaches’ impact and how they provide critical capacity in creating more equitable learning spaces.
3. Program Foundations & Content: Provides a deep dive into key student success coaching program components. It also helps leaders and decision makers ask essential questions to understand if student success coaches are right for their school or program.
4. Program Design & Implementation: Breaks down the critical program design elements of a successful student success coach program.

Acknowledgements:

This Student Success Coaches Toolkit would not be possible without the expertise of many of our colleagues across the country. The layout of this toolkit is based upon the great work of the team at The National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) and their High-Impact Tutoring: Out-of-School Time Playbook. NSSA is one of the five technical assistance leads that City Year works alongside as part of the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS) Hub to support the field in bringing more people into high-impact roles supporting students and youth in communities nationwide. In particular, we’d like to thank members of the NPSS Youth Development Practice and Pathways Working Group, including: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Camp Fire, Horizons National, MENTOR, YMCA of the USA, NPSS Support Hub at the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center, and Knowledge to Power Catalysts.