Written by Thomas Story, City Year Boston Project Leader serving on the Comcast Team. City Year Boston Alumni Spotlights featured on the last Friday of the month.

As the year draws to a close, many corps members prepare for Life After City Year (something we here at City Year call LACY). Some enter their first year of college while others continue their higher education in grad school. Some follow the dreams they had since their first day of City Year and others have their dreams fundamentally changed by their experiences in City Year. Rachel Duvivier, 2010-2011 City Year Boston alumna, is one of those corps members that fits into the latter description.

Rachel grew up in Los Angeles, California. She attended a small private arts high school called Oakwood Secondary School and later attended University of California, Davis. She studied sociology with an emphasis in social services, which focused largely on social justice. Her studies shed light on the privilege of attending a private school and how different of an educational experience students have in the city of Los Angeles. She was struck by what she believed was the largest social justice issue of this American generation’s time: education.

“I decided that after I graduated, I really wanted to work on the ground to close the achievement gap and help the dropout crisis,” she said.

And so she did. Rachel applied to City Year Boston and, in 2010-2011, she served on the Comcast Team at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School alongside David Jones, Jr. as tutor and mentor in a ninth grade classroom. Before walking through the front doors, Rachel knew the reputation of the Burke. What she found, however, Continue reading →