Evolution Mentoring and Coaching provides life coaching for high school students in Marin County, California and virtually worldwide. Jeffrey Leiken, MA is an experienced mentor with more than 25 years of practice helping high school students build motivation, confidence and direction, and prepare for what comes after graduation. This is mentoring, not therapy.
Four Years That Are Measured Constantly
High school has become a long assessment. Every semester counts, every activity is weighed, and a teenager is asked to decide who they are while being ranked on it. Some students thrive on that. Others quietly conclude that the safest thing is to stop trying visibly, because effort that fails is worse than never having tried.
Parents contact Jeff about students who are capable and coasting, who are anxious about performance in a way that never switches off, whose perfectionism prevents them starting at all, who have no idea what they want and are being asked to declare it, or who are producing the transcript and losing themselves behind it.
Not Tutoring, and Not Admissions Consulting
This is not academic support and it is not help with applications. Those services address the output. This work addresses the person producing it: motivation, self-belief, the ability to start, the ability to recover from a bad result, and a clear sense of what the student actually wants rather than what they have absorbed.
Students who get that right tend to fix the grades themselves, because the problem was never capability.
Guidance They Will Actually Accept
By sixteen, most students have stopped hearing advice from home. That is normal development, not a broken relationship. A trusted adult from outside the family can say the same thing and be listened to. Jeff is a life coach and mentor, not a therapist, and does not provide therapy. He talks to high school students directly, as adults in training rather than problems to manage.
The Skills Nobody Teaches
High school assesses knowledge constantly and teaches almost nothing about how to function. How to start work you are dreading. How to recover from a grade that felt like a verdict on you personally. How to disagree with a friend and keep the friendship. How to work out what you want when everyone around you has an opinion about it. How to be mediocre at something new without concluding that you are bad at everything.
These are learnable, and they transfer. A student who picks them up at sixteen carries them into college, into work, and into every difficult thing that comes afterward.
You’ve watched the schedule fill up — AP classes, college tours, test prep, activities that look good on paper. The transcript is building. You’re not sure your high schooler is.
Evolution Mentoring® is not therapy.
It’s the work of helping a high schooler answer the question every high schooler is answering whether they know it or not: what are these four years for? In sessions, your student gets a trusted adult — outside school and family, paying attention to them, not the resume they’re building. Evolution Mentoring is for high schoolers who are overwhelmed, not mentally ill. It often comes after therapy, or alongside it — rarely a replacement. If your high schooler is in crisis, the first step is a referral to clinical care.
What Life Coaching for High School Students Is
Life coaching for high school students is one-on-one developmental work centered on the question high schoolers are answering whether they know it or not: what are these four years for? The work helps them answer it on their own terms — through conversation, decisions, and the life skills the curriculum assumes but doesn’t teach.
High school is the four-year stretch when schedule, grades, and applications feel like the point. The work gives your high schooler a place to figure out what the point actually is.
Sessions run on a regular monthly schedule, in person in Mill Valley and Marin County or remotely by video and phone. Most premium-tier engagements run six to eighteen months.
How Evolution Mentoring Works
Evolution Mentoring combines three disciplines one-on-one: life coaching for direction, leadership development for skill-building, and deep listening — the non-clinical foundation that makes the first two land. Applied to high school students, the work focuses on the skills the four-year curriculum expects but doesn’t teach: time management, self-advocacy with adults outside the family, decision-making with imperfect information, communication, and the harder underlying question of what these years are for.
What We Address with High School Students
What the work addresses with high schoolers, in practice:
- The grade-equals-worth spiral — when performance becomes identity and a setback feels like a verdict.
- The college-application tunnel — when “where I get in” is the only measure and senior year shrinks to one number.
- Friend-group lockdown — when school’s social hierarchy becomes a cage and changing it feels impossible.
- Schedule overload — when six classes, three clubs, a sport, and a job feel required and impossible.
- The “what after” gap — when senior year arrives and direction hasn’t.
Why Evolution Mentoring and Life Coaching
High school is built around outputs that can be measured. The work building what can’t — the skills the curriculum doesn’t teach, the direction the calendar doesn’t choose, the judgment no one can transcript — happens somewhere else.
Jeffrey Leiken has worked with high schoolers and their families since 1998 — more than 25 years across 17 countries. He holds an MA in Educational Counseling, is adjunct faculty at the University of San Francisco, guest-lectures at Stanford, gave a TEDx talk on adolescent leadership, and authored a book on the subject.
What Parents Commonly Notice
The work shows up in observable shifts. A few patterns recur:
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- The schedule starts answering to a person. Course load and activity decisions become theirs — with reasoning — instead of expected.
- Self-advocacy starts happening in real situations. They email a teacher, ask a counselor a hard question, or push back on a coach without parent intermediation.
- Decisions get made with information instead of paralysis. “I don’t know what to do” becomes a sequence of considerations, then a choice.
- The performance armor cracks usefully. Grades stop being the whole story — and a real conversation about what something means becomes possible.
- The “what’s next” question starts having shape. Post-graduation considerations become specific instead of abstract anxiety.
The Process
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- Start with a 30-minute consultation — a working call that surfaces what’s going on at home and whether this is the right work.
- If it fits, meetings begin on a regular monthly schedule, in person in Marin County or remotely by video and phone.
- Direct reach-out between sessions — when something hard happens, you don’t wait.
- Cadence recalibrates as the work matures.
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Standard agreements:
- No obligation to continue after the first session if the fit isn’t right.
- Confidentiality holds within the bounds of mandatory reporting law.
- No diagnoses, no clinical labels, no treatment of mental illness.
If you are not ready to schedule yet, two no-friction next steps-
Read the Book
Jeff’s book distills 25+ years of practice into a framework for raising capable, grounded young adults.
Watch the TEDx Talk
Jeff’s TEDx talk on what it actually takes to mentor adolescents into capable adults.
About Jeffrey Leiken, MA
Jeffrey Leiken, MA, founded Evolution Mentoring and Life Coaching and developed Mentor Counseling — a methodology refined since 1998, with more than 25 years across 17 countries.
He holds an MA in Educational Counseling, is adjunct faculty at the University of San Francisco, guest-lectures at Stanford, gave a TEDx talk on adolescent leadership, and authored a book on the subject.
Sessions are available in person in Mill Valley and Marin County or remotely by video and phone. For high schoolers, the work focuses on the four years — the skills the curriculum doesn’t teach, the direction the calendar doesn’t choose.
What High Schoolers say
“It’s not often that you get the privilege of knowing someone like I have known Jeff Leiken. Jeff came into my life at the perfect time. I was entering High School and while I was a very good student and an accomplished athlete, I was struggling to make quality friends and felt like I no idea what to do about it. There were so many nights where I played back situations in my head where I could have done things differently than I did, and I always wished that I could go back and do things differently. If you ever have the opportunity to work with or meet this man, trust me you will never regret it cause there’s no one else like him out there.”
— Keaton, San Rafael, CA
“Words cannot describe what happened to me after the one conversation you had with me Jeff. I truly feel as though I have experienced something totally beyond words. The work you did with me is something I will one day tell my grandchildren about. I feel as though what I felt was a crossroad in my life, now I have made the choice to move in a direction. Where I go from here is not something I question, I truly believe that everything is right again.“
— Zack O, Chicago, IL
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Preparing for What Comes Next
The transition after graduation undoes more capable students than anything that happens during high school. Structure disappears overnight and nobody has taught them to build their own. Jeff works with students through that handover and continues with them into the college years and beyond, through coaching for young adults up to age 31.
Meetings and Availability
Sessions run on a regular monthly schedule, in person in Mill Valley and Marin County or remotely by video and phone. At the comprehensive level Jeff is reachable in between by text, email and phone, which matters during exam weeks, decision weeks and the bad nights that follow a result.
Parents can also work with Jeff directly through a parent coaching consultation. Schedule a free consultation to talk about your student.
What if my high schooler doesn't think they need it?
Most high schoolers are skeptical at first — “I’m fine.” Jeff doesn’t push, lecture, or ask questions that get their defenses up. The work starts with being heard.
Is this the same as a college admissions consultant?
No. A college admissions consultant helps with the application. This work helps the person applying — the skills, direction, and judgement no application can measure.
Is this the same as a tutor or EF coach?
No. Tutors and EF coaches teach subjects and task management. This work is broader — life skills the curriculum expects but doesn’t teach, plus what these four years are for.
Are sessions virtual or in-person?
Both. In person in Mill Valley and Marin County, or remotely by video and phone anywhere in the world. Jeff’s practice reaches families in 17 countries.
How do We get started?
Schedule a 30-minute consultation with Jeffrey Leiken. No obligation to continue if the first session isn’t the right fit.
My student is bright but not trying. Why?
Capable students who stop trying are usually avoiding the risk of visible failure rather than lacking ability, and that is directly what this work addresses.
Is it therapy?
No. Jeff is a life coach and mentor, not a therapist. He does not provide therapy and does not accept insurance.
Does the work continue after graduation?
Yes. Many families continue through the college years, which is when the loss of structure hits hardest.
What does it cost?
Monthly fees range from $750 to $3,500 depending on the level of access needed. The first consultation is free.
Neighbourhoods we serve in California-
Neighbourhoods we serve in other US states-
- Chicago Teen Coaching
- Dallas Teen Coaching
- Houston Teen Coaching
- Jacksonville Teen Coaching
- Los Angeles Teen Coaching
- New York City Teen Coaching
- Philadelphia Teen Coaching
- Phoenix Teen Coaching
- San Antonio Teen Coaching
- San Diego Teen Coaching
- Austin Teen Coaching
- Fort Worth Teen Coaching
- San Jose Teen Coaching
- Columbus Teen Coaching
- Charlotte Teen Coaching
- Indianapolis Teen Coaching
- San Francisco Teen Coaching
- Seattle Teen Coaching
- Denver Teen Coaching
- Oklahoma City Teen Coaching
Schedule a Consultation for High Schoolers Coaching
Jeff offers a consultation to learn about your family’s situation and determine whether this mentoring relationship is the right fit. There’s no pressure—just a chance to get real answers and explore a different path forward.