Adults sure are finding just about every way possible to mess up this country and planet. So it’s heartening to find impressive and inspiring kids who might be able to right our rapidly sinking ship. Here are a few local examples.

If it were a made-for-TV movie, you’d never believe it. A new immigrant to the United States lives in poverty, attends a low-income public high school and wins a full-ride to Princeton!

But it’s true.

Determination pays off: Nour Aissaoui, 17, was born in the United States, but her family moved back to its native Algeria when she was just a baby. Nour was the only one in her family with U.S. citizenship and, as a teenager, longed to move back to the United States. At just 15, she did it — alone and speaking hardly any English.

“You can succeed more here,” she explained. “You have more freedoms.”

She moved into a studio apartment in the Tenderloin with her aunt, uncle and cousin. It’s crowded and noisy, and she has to do her homework in the bathroom late at night when everybody’s asleep.

“But I’m really thankful,” she said.

She attends John O’Connell High in the Mission District, a public school with mostly poor students, many of whom go to City College or San Francisco State University. A handful each year goes to UC schools. Nobody can remember any student ever being accepted into an Ivy League university.

Until now.

Nour said her GPA is about a 4.09. She aced her SAT’s, participates in all sorts of extracurricular activities and speaks four languages including English, which she now speaks perfectly. She participated in QuestBridge, a Palo Alto nonprofit that helps exceptional low-income teens apply and gain entrance to prestigious colleges.

She received an email last month with just about the best subject line ever: “Congratulations from Princeton!” It also informed her that she’d graduate debt free.

“I was, like, so shocked!” she said. “I was in disbelief. Why would they pick me?”

Jill Marinelli, who works in O’Connell’s college and career program, was there when Nour opened that treasured email. Nour had been asking her consistently for two years about how to get into college, far earlier than most kids start thinking seriously about it.

“She was just super motivated, and she knew her goals and what she wanted, and was ready to put in all the work to get there,” Marinelli said.

Nour is waiting for word from a number of other universities, including UC Berkeley and Stanford, before she makes her final decision. She’s a little hesitant to move far from the city and her relatives here, considering she’s already so far from her family in Algeria.

Nour is a practicing Muslim and wears a hijab, which has attracted some rude stares and nasty comments — even in liberal San Francisco. She overheard some women on Muni talking in French about how she might be a terrorist and responded to them in French that she understood them perfectly and didn’t appreciate the comments.

“The look on their faces!” she said with a grin. “Ignorant people are everywhere.”

She wants to become a doctor, practicing medicine and doing research in clinics around the world. When she received word from Princeton, she Skyped with her family in Algeria to tell them the news. They cried with joy and looked up images of Princeton on their computer, commenting that it looks like a castle.

So what’s Nour’s secret for success?

“It’s just about motivation and knowing to preserve your identity, not trying to be like everyone else,” she said. “Just keep your values.”

Starting early: Former Vice President Joe Biden was in San Francisco last week to promote his new memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” at the Jewish Community Center. In a small, separate room, the center hosted an event beforehand for a few dozen teens who are interested in entering politics, telling them they’d each get a signed copy of the book and be able to watch Biden’s talk on simulcast.

The teens worked in small groups to come up with a particular cause they wanted to push, which politicians they wanted to lobby and how to get the lawmakers’ attention.

I chatted with Jake Cohen, 15, and Alexandra Evans, 17, who live in Mill Valley and attend Tamalpais High. They’re co-presidents of a group Cohen founded called Students for Social Justice. They recently organized a walk-out to support “Dreamers” — 200 kids left class.

“I want to run for office as soon as I’m 18,” Cohen said, noting he eventually wants to become the first openly gay man to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Evans wants to be in politics, too, but only on the side. Her main goal is to become an astrophysicist, but she figures politics needs a healthy dose of science since so many politicians don’t believe in climate change.

“We need people who believe in facts rather than opinions,” she said. “I feel like I want to change something.”

By the way, if you were an adult sitting in the big auditorium waiting 45 minutes for Biden to appear, it was because he stopped by to surprise the teens and talked with them at length. I’d say they deserved it.

An app for Mom: Moms can be so annoying. Just ask my sons.

Paulette Donsavage was one such well-meaning but slightly irritating mom who couldn’t get the hang of Lowell High’s confusing schedule, which has different start times and different lengths of classes depending on the day of the week.

“They have all these codes,” explained Donsavage, a lawyer who lives in NoPa, of the schedule. “The kids understand it better than the parents.”

Her 15-year-old son, Jackson Cooley, is one of four kids in a carpool to Lowell so it was important to know when he needed to get there. He got tired of her asking about it every day so he created an app called Lowell Schedule, which is available in the app store.

“Hopefully, they can get the hang of it,” he said of Lowell parents.

He sent me a follow-up email reading in part, “I’ve released V1.1, which fixes a couple issues, and has a few new features, such as a widget extension. V2.0 is currently in the works.”

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive.

Jackson has created apps before and wants to major in computer science in college. Asked what he wants to do for a living, he said, “Just creating things with technology. I find it fascinating and always evolving.”

Jackson got to do what he loves, and best of all, his mom doesn’t ask him what time school starts anymore. Win-win.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf