To the beat of Aretha Franklin, and with pizza-laden paper plates poised precariously on their laps, families sit in the crowd at the assembly hall of Horace Mann Middle School. They are waiting. They look slightly anxious. It's not graduation day- though it is something akin. The seventh and eighth graders here are at a pivotal time in their young lives, when school dropout problems can begin, experts say. Recognizing the threat, these families are participating in Spark, a program that aims to boost graduation rates of at-risk youth through one-on-one job apprenticeships. Earlier this school year, the students met their apprentices in what co-founder Chris Balme calls "a beautiful and amazingly awkward moment."
