Having attended Boston Public Schools as a child, recent Framingham State graduate Justin Lin ’15 understands the challenges many urban students face in school. 

As graduation approached last May, Lin decided that he wanted to do something to give back to his community. So he applied to City Year Boston, a chapter of the national City Year organization dedicated to helping students in high-poverty communities succeed in school.

“I felt like it was a great opportunity to help out kids in the community I grew up in,” says Lin, who majored in Geography at FSU, with a concentration in Global Studies and a minor in History.

City Year Boston deploys AmeriCorps members in 21 elementary, middle and high schools, positively impacting more than 10,000 students. Lin was assigned to Higginson/Lewis K–8 School in Roxbury, where he currently mentors and tutors 7th-grade students who are below grade level in reading skills.

“Many of the students’ behavioral issues are familiar to me, having gone through Boston Public Schools,” Lin says. “As an adult role model now, it’s a challenge building relationships with the students and getting to know them. I feel I’ve come a long way since I began in August.” 

Lin will serve with City Year Boston through June and must complete 1,700 hours of work by then. After that, he’s keeping his options open for what will come next.

“I’d like to stay connected to the education field in some way,” Lin says. “I enjoy working with kids in the inner city, and want to give back to the community while I’m young and able to do so.”