HILLSBOROUGH: Two Hillsborough residents will teach a year in Boston

   Angela Chen and Matthew Ennis, both alumni of Hillsborough High School in 2008, have committed a year to help students in Boston succeed by serving as AmeriCorps members with City Year.
   Ms. Chen, a 2012 graduate of The College of New Jersey, will work on the Bain and Company team at Hennigan Elementary School. Mr. Ennis, a 2012 graduate of Lehigh University, will serve at the Mattahunt Elementary School.
   During 10 months of service, they will support teachers and at-risk students focusing on attendance, behavior and course work by serving as a tutor, mentor and role model.
   City Year, an education-focused AmeriCorps program founded in Boston in 1988, aims to address the high school dropout crisis by recruiting, training and deploying talented and passionate young adults to help students and schools succeed.
   In Boston, teams of corps members are serving in 21 schools, including all of the state-designated turnaround schools, and reach more than 11,000 students each day. Throughout their year, corps members receive more than 200 hours of training to prepare them to partner with teachers to rapidly improve students’ attendance, behavior and course performance — indicators that can predict if students will fall behind and not graduate with their peers.
   Ms. Chen and Mr. Ennis are more than 1,100 young adults who applied for 265 positions with City Year Boston. More than 60 universities and professional programs offer scholarships and priority preference City Year alumni through the Give a Year program established in 2009. During their year of service, corps members also have opportunities to find a professional mentor, often from one of City Year’s corporate sponsors, and network with the more than 2,000 alumni in the greater Boston area.
   Last year, City Year Boston corps members helped reduce the number of students failing English by two-thirds in the middle schools where they served while 77 percent of elementary school students supported by corps members improved performance on literacy assessments.