Programs
Three programs, one goal
Students know exactly what's broken at their school. What they're missing is a way to do something about it. Our three programs teach the same self-advocacy, civics, and trust-building skills at three levels of depth.
Doorstops
Free, research-based guides that walk a student through fixing one specific problem — from an overdue assignment to a grant for building repairs.
Explore Doorstops → Go deeperDoorstop Sessions
In-person workshops and mentorship at your school, teaching the same strategies with the trust and momentum that only happens face to face.
See how Sessions work → Lead othersDoorstop Fellows
A paid fellowship for students ready to run a club, mentor their peers, and leave their school better than they found it.
Apply to be a Fellow →Doorstops
Doorstops open doors — and hold them open
Doorstops are research-based, interactive resources that guide a student through resolving one specific school problem. They cover day-to-day student life; classroom, school, and district policy; relationships with teachers and peers; facilities and programs; bullying, harassment, and mental health; and navigating extracurriculars and college applications.
The range is deliberate. One Doorstop is an email template you send a teacher when you're overdue on an assignment. Another is step-by-step instructions for raising grant funding to repair your school. Every one of them teaches civics, self-advocacy, and trust-building in the process of solving the actual problem — the skills come with the solution, not instead of it.
Students find Doorstops on social media or on our site, where they can type in any problem they're having and an AI agent routes them to the right one.
What that looks like
Doorstop Sessions
Sessions bring Doorstops into action
Doorstop Sessions are in-person support and mentorship programs for high schoolers who feel powerless to change what's wrong with their school. Our staff and volunteers meet with students and teach the same self-advocacy, civic engagement, and trust-building skills that Doorstops teach online.
Sessions add a live learning environment and a chance to build long-term, trusted relationships with adults who are there specifically to help students get things done.
Sessions are built with schools, student governments, parent groups, and student clubs. Staff and volunteers who deliver them are trained in social-emotional learning, active listening, and youth psychology.
How a partnership starts
We listen first
We meet with students, parents, teachers, and administrators to understand that school's specific problems and which self-advocacy skills are missing. We observe classes, hold focus groups, and listen one-on-one, including with chronically absent students and families.
We teach constructive strategies
We run Sessions with interested student groups: instruction on self-advocacy, learning games, and practical advice on problems ranging from bad school lunch and overdue homework to changing policy on phone use, curriculum, and student voice.
We build a lasting partnership
We run sessions tailored to a school's real problems and hope to regularly meet with and support students. Where it's useful, we combine Sessions with tutoring, parent engagement, and after-school activities.
Doorstop Fellows
Fellows teach the next generation
Doorstop Fellows is a fellowship that gives motivated students the mentorship, guidance, and funding to teach Doorstop strategies to their peers and run a school club focused on improving their school.
Fellowships run three to six months, renewable as long as the student is in high school and in good standing.
Fellows join weekly support calls — online by default, in person where we can — and have an open channel to reach staff or volunteers any time. We work with them one-on-one on the skills they need, help them start a club, speak at club meetings, and connect members to the right Doorstops.
What Fellows commit to
Improve their own school
Dedicate weekly time to the specific problems they named in their application.
Help their peers do the same
Provide peer-to-peer mentorship, through a school club or informally through conversations with other students.
That's why graduating Fellows can nominate other students at their school to apply. They know their teachers, their peers, and their building far better than we ever will — and the program continues where it's already taken root. For the students themselves, it's a serious extracurricular that unlocks lasting change.
Applications will open soon to any student enrolled in a U.S. high school who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. We also seek out interested students at schools where we already run Sessions.
Why this works
Students have something we never had: leverage
"Less homework! Shorter school days! Better food!" Inundated with revolutionary ideas, schools closed their suggestion boxes a long time ago. But students today have phones in their hands and real bandwidth at their fingertips. Instead of wrangling phones away — the pain, the angst, the frustrated PTO — ask them: what do you want in exchange?
When students are involved in the decision, they're more likely to accept it. And when they feel heard, they start voicing changes that are actually feasible: more class time out of their desks, a lower student-counselor ratio, a career day, more basketballs in the gym.
This isn't an argument for leading by committee — you can't run a school that way. But giving every student a voice, not just the outspoken ones, changes what school feels like. It becomes a place of trust instead of powerlessness. We facilitate these conversations at no cost to public schools.