Frequently Asked Questions

WAM Academy is an interactive mentoring platform for schools and out-of-school-time providers for students to access the powerful stories of mentors. The platform measures student character growth through their writing. WAM is aligned with leading social-emotional learning frameworks and mindfulness best practices. WAM disrupts mentoring models which fail to scale and analyze data on student growth across the country and internationally.

We carefully recruit our mentor speakers from our vast network, looking for individuals who embody our mission and core values, and prioritize qualities like authenticity and personal candor. If you share our passion for empowering and inspiring the next generation of leaders, click here to learn more about becoming a mentor.

We want to showcase the diversity of our experiences at scale and create the most sustainable and wide-sweeping reflection for youth. Would you like to be a mentor or have someone to recommend? Click here to nominate or volunteer, and we’ll do our best to get to know them and capture their story.

No, the program leverages technology as a catalyst for vulnerability through dialogue that occurs offline as well. We provide structure for facilitation which creates in-depth discussion for pre-teens and teens during the sessions on the topic of the day. This helps youth articulate their story first with in-person educators before they enter their responses in the WAM Academy platform. The peer-to-peer and peer-to-facilitator conversation is about equal to the time spent individually journaling on the platform.

WAM can be used anytime during the day or after-school, with 20-minutes to an hour to use. Some school leaders refer to it as the “new study hall”.

Our program is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing us to reach students in a variety of settings outside of the traditional school setting. We prioritize involving parents and the community by offering regular updates and communication, resources to support students' learning and development, and building partnerships with community organizations and leaders.

We designed the platform for middle and high school youth. In our product testing, we have seen 5th-12th graders provide the most engaging feedback as well as praise from program coordinators (administrators). We can also engage younger and older depending on the nature of the partnership. We’d be happy to talk with you about the differences with each age group.

WAM Summer Academy is a remote character development program designed for Black, Brown, and diverse youth, ages 12-24, that runs from June through August. The program is unique in its focus on character development and social-emotional learning, allowing students to engage in facilitated conversations with diverse role models and peers that support their growth and development as individuals. By exploring important concepts related to personal growth and development and reflecting on their own experiences and beliefs, students can enhance their self-awareness, decision-making skills, and relationship-building abilities, ultimately preparing them for success in all areas of life.

Not at this time. We designed the platform to provide the most engagement through authentic storytelling without relying on syncing times and time zones. We want students to learn from their adult counterparts without having to rely on matching either. In today’s digital age, we know that matching doesn’t yield the biggest impact because it does not scale effectively to address the challenges of youth. We want our mentors to have an impact across the limits of time and place. This also saves on program costs and facilitates addressing current issues with youth. As we evolve and grow our partnerships with stakeholders, we plan purposeful interaction with our most popular mentors. In fact, please click here if you’d like to be an organizational partner.

Yes, we encourage you to register by clicking “login” on our homepage and creating your unique password-protected credentials.

Each student may register on our platform and receive their own login for individual reports on their progress.

Click here to enroll in the WAM Academy Platform. 

After the 7-day free-trial access to the platform, you will be asked to officially register with our system for monthly billing.

Yes, we would be excited to onboard your school district or organization. Our platform is built to scale our student and mentor experience. We’d like to grow with the desires of your educators on the ground and align with your leadership's Social-Emotional Learning goals.

At WAM Academy, we are dedicated to exclusively engaging with Black, Brown, and diverse role models digitally. We also prioritize integrating student feedback into our platform to guarantee an obsessively user-centric approach.
 
At WAM, learners' data is used to evaluate their written responses with a metric scale (1-5) based on the CASEL framework schools in our target markets use. This helps us to better understand student progress and needs, and tailor our programming to be more effective and impactful. We prioritize the privacy and security of learner data, and use it only for the purposes of improving our programming and serving our learners better.

We Are Marcus has evolved into WAM Academy as we have expanded our focus and offerings to better serve Black, Brown, and diverse learners. The new name better reflects our commitment to providing young people with access to diverse role models and relevant content to support their growth and development. We also believe the new name better represents our mission and values and reflects the inclusive and supportive community we strive to create.