Transform Your Teen into a Confident, Switched-On Learner.

Does your teen lack a love of learning? Struggle to understand the challenging texts teachers assign? Feel anxious about school and how prepared they are for their upcoming transitions to high school and college?

Zinc’s BREAKTHROUGH program can help.

What Your Teen Will Get from a Zinc BREAKTHROUGH:

  • Increased confidence academically and overall

  • Less anxiety about school, tests, and upcoming transitions to college or high school

  • Stronger reading comprehension and writing skills

  • A solid foundation in strategies to excel on standardized tests, like the SAT, ACT, ISEE, SSAT, Regents, state tests, and SHSAT

  • A deeper understanding of a topic they’re excited to learn about; the program will center critical thinking and reading practice on a subject of their choosing

  • A personal learning coach who celebrates wins and helps to maintain motivation when pushing intellectual limits

How It Works:

  • Apply by completing this form about your teen, with them or on your own. The application will allow you to choose if you’d like the three-month, six-month or ongoing (monthly subscription) program.

  • We use the application information to match your child with an elite learning coach who will mesh with their personality, share their interests, and have expertise in their areas with the most room for growth

  • The coach meets with your teen virtually to set them on their learning path, which will initially center on Zinc’s Reading Ignition Unit, which a 2021 study by The College Board found to have a significant impact on teens’ test scores.

  • The coach will have text check-ins every one to three days to make sure your teen is staying motivated and engaged, growing and not stalled with any questions. There will be monthly hour-long video check-ins.

  • Their learning will culminate in a capstone project on the subject they chose to delve into.

  • Parents/guardians can opt to receive a weekly or monthly progress report from the coach.

  • Students will spend three hours per week on BREAKTHROUGH. They can space this out as works best for their schedule.

Cost:

  • 3-month program: $X

  • 6-month program: $Y

  • Ongoing program: $Z per month

Meet Some of Our Elite Learning Coaches

  • Monet Goode

    Harvard graduate and harp player, Monet has been a tutor for six years. She loves getting kids excited about the power of the written word. She boasts routine SAT score improvements of hundreds of points.

  • Emmett Marsh

    Emmett holds a PhD in physics from Stanford and loves to turn teens on to the wonders of science, a wonder often lost after childhood. He has been a teacher at Stuyvesant for 10 years.

  • Eleanor Parks

    Eleanor speaks five languages and holds a BA from Brown. She’s a playwright and English teacher at The Pingry School,. Eleanor loves using poetry as a way to get her students to improve as writers and readers.

Select Zinc Partners:

Zinc is proud to partner with the New York City Department of Education in their College Access for All program.

Since 2016, Zinc’s Learning Labs’ online curriculum, upon which BREAKTHROUGH is centered, has been a central component of The College Board’s SpringBoard Digital English Language Arts program. It’s used by millions of middle and high schoolers across the U.S.

Year after year, US News and World Report ranks Trinity as the number one prep school in the country. Zinc has been honored to lead SAT/ACT test-prep classes there since 2018.