Amid the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, a poignant documentary series quietly captured a defining student experience of our era. The Class, currently airing on PBS, highlights the importance of mentorship in college admissions as it follows college advisor Mr. Cam and his students at Deer Valley High School navigating the complex application process during the first year of the pandemic. The series showcases the transformative role mentorship plays in shaping students’ futures, especially in times of uncertainty.
Executive produced by actor and musician Daveed Diggs and Lafayette College President Nicole Hurd, the series calls attention to the enduring power of mentorship, community, and resilience when traditional structures and supports suddenly vanish.
This docuseries itself could have been derailed by the pandemic. Instead, Hurd, who also founded the College Advising Corps, pushed the production forward with a smaller crew.
The result is a compelling portrayal of perseverance. The students remained dedicated to sharing their stories during the 2020-2021 academic year, even as the world around them unraveled. Diggs, reviewing the raw footage from his own pandemic isolation, was struck by their determination.
“I’m sitting at home drinking wine at 10:00 a.m. and getting these dailies from students who were fighting tooth and nail to get through their final year of high school and figure out how to go to college,” he reflects in an interview. “It was inspiring at the time. And I find the story even more crucial now in a lot of ways.”
The Importance of Mentorship: Insights for Parents
The docuseries underscores the vital role mentors play in students’ lives, especially during periods of isolation. For parents, this highlights the importance of fostering multiple supportive relationships for their children beyond the family unit.
Diggs reflects on how the pandemic disrupted traditional mentorship opportunities: “When we locked everything down, we, in a lot of ways, lost community,” he says. “We’d sort of figured out how to scrape by without people. And what you watch Cam and those students doing is figuring out how to have that in spite of the fact that they were not allowed to gather.”
In my research on college access for low-income and first-generation students, I’ve found that mentorship doesn’t flourish by accident—it’s the result of an intentional school culture. “The Class” offers a compelling visual example of how this culture can be cultivated—even in the most challenging times—through trust, persistence, and shared belief.
For parents, this docuseries serves as a call to action: create opportunities for your child to build relationships with mentors—teachers, coaches, counselors—who can offer fresh perspectives and affirmation beyond the home.
Sharing Personal Narratives: A Means of Connection
Diggs credits his own success to mentors who guided him, including during his college journey to Brown University. In one pivotal conversation at Berkeley High School, an advisor pointed him toward Ivy League institutions and mentioned Brown University’s open curriculum.
“For the kind of weirdo, artsy kid I was, it [the flexibility and culture] sounded right up my alley,” Diggs recalls.
The documentary illustrates that success rarely follows a straight path—an important lesson for parents who might be anxious about their children’s educational trajectories, a narrative that my book “Get Real and Get In” also emphasizes.
“Don’t be afraid to tell your own story,” Hurd advises parents watching the docuseries. “That’s the power of this. It’s the power of watching Cam tell his story to these students and then having them be inspired.” As Hurd advises families navigating the competitive admissions landscape: “College is what you make of it, and there are a lot of amazing colleges in this country.”
Balancing Technology and Human Interaction
For parents raising children in an increasingly digital world, the docuseries offers insights on balancing technological tools with human connection. Hurd distinguishes between the “transactional” aspects of college advising that AI can handle and the “relational” elements that require human interaction:
“There’s the things that are transactional AI can help you with, such as deadlines, and then there’s a relational piece you’ll see in the docuseries. And that’s never going to be AI,” Hurd reflects. “It’s about somebody looking you in the eye and saying, ‘I believe in you.'”
Parents can apply this wisdom by helping their children leverage technological resources while ensuring they maintain meaningful human connections that provide emotional support and inspiration.
The Significance of Community
Perhaps the most profound lesson for parents is the essential value of community in education. As Diggs emphasizes: “Community is really important and it can go away. We take it for granted and it’s already been snatched away from us once and we should be also protecting that better.”
This insight encourages parents to actively foster community connections for their children and to recognize that education is not solely about academic achievement but about belonging to something larger than oneself. As Hurd puts it, “We belong to each other in these really beautiful and profound ways… when we believe in each other and take care of each other, magical things can happen.”
Through The Class, both Diggs and Hurd offer parents a powerful reminder that supporting their children’s educational journeys in college admissions and beyond requires both practical guidance and a commitment to building and maintaining the communities that make meaningful learning possible. The documentary underscores that mentorship in college admissions is not just about academic support—it’s about fostering connections, resilience, and a sense of belonging that can make all the difference in a student’s path to success.