Mentor/buddies for incoming students
Developmentally responsive middle schools provide service-learning opportunities. Serving as a mentor for incoming students helps older students develop responsibility, compassion, and leadership skills. Often, eighth-grade mentors served as peer counselors during their seventh-grade year. Counselors typically train new mentors in a late summer training session.1 Teachers from both feeder and destination schools may share student e-mail addresses to foster assigned e-buddy relationships.
In the Spotlight
John Glenn Middle School of International Studies, Desert Sands Unified School District, a 2004 Schools to Watch™-Taking Center Stage Model School
During a half-day session before school starts, eighth-grade student leaders receive training to serve as mentors for groups of ten sixth graders. On the presession day when sixth graders come to get their schedules, they meet in teams with their mentors to learn about the transition to middle school.
Rio Norte Junior High School, William S. Hart Union High School District
Trained as Wings Ambassadors, eighth-grade students call a list of their incoming sixth-grade buddies to tell them about the before-school visiting day and to introduce themselves as the person to look for on the day of the visit. When sixth graders arrive, they meet the mentors, who continue to serve as a contact person for them during their first week.
In lieu of a formal transition program, middle schools can allow incoming sixth- or seventh-grade students to start school one day earlier than the bigger eighth-graders. It takes some of the stress out of the first day of middle school. Students can meet their teachers, take school tours, and get a sense of orientation in a less-congested campus.
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Elementary school visits
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Newsletters, newspapers, school Web sites, and plays to demystify the middle grades
Footnote
1Taking Center Stage. Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2001, 101.
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