Summer Bridge takes mystery out of big move to new school

Entering sixth graders, from left, Michael Williams, Janiyah Outlaw and Blake Briggins talk with math teacher Christy Hyde and Dr. Jeff Sutton, who teaches English language arts, during a tour of EB Frink Middle School on Tuesday as LCPS’s Summer Bridge Academy winds down. Summer Bridge is a three-week program designed to help rising sixth and ninth graders make the step up to a new school environment.

Janiyah Outlaw might not know her way around EB Frink Middle School yet, but she knows a lot more about moving up to the sixth grade after spending the past three weeks in LCPS’s Summer Bridge Academy, a program helping rising sixth and ninth graders make the step up to a new school environment.

 “I know more sixth grade teachers and I know which classes there are,” Janiyah said Tuesday while she toured Frink with a small group of Summer Bridge students who just last month put the fifth grade and their La Grange Elementary School days behind them.

While the 11-year-old concedes that getting lost in the halls on her first day is still a possibility – “I hope there are some teachers standing out there,” she said – her new school appears less new because of what she and other Summer Bridge participants learned about teacher expectations at the next level and about what that big step up in grade requires of them emotionally and academically.

“There’s a little bit more independence on the student’s part when it comes to inside the classroom, a little bit more independent work,” said Christy Hyde, a sixth-grade math teacher at Frink and a leader in the middle-school portion of Summer Bridge for students leaving La Grange and Banks elementary schools and the K-5 section of Contentnea-Savannah K-8 School.

Rising sixth graders headed to Woodington Middle and Rochelle Middle received the same Summer Bridge attention and also toured their new schools this week.

Summer classes in math, English language arts and science gave students a taste of sixth-grade work. They met regularly with middle school counselors and fit physical education sessions into their schedule.

“They got a preview of what we’ll be doing in the sixth grade,” Hyde said.

The tour on Tuesday took the former fifth graders into classrooms on Frink’s sixth-grade hall, into the media center and gym and the area where bus riders enter the building. Along with Hyde, Frink principal Michael Moon and Stephanie Harrell, the Summer Bridge administrator, accompanied the students.

“That’s another new thing for you,” Moon told the students after listing the elective subjects available to them. “Some of your classes switch after Christmas. You’ll start with either science or social studies, not both, and you’ll have one of them until Christmas and after Christmas you’ll switch and take the other one,” he said. “With your electives, you’ll do the same thing.”

When Moon listed Frink’s sports teams, Janiyah stopped him at volleyball. “Tryout will be the first week of school,” the principal told her.

Even before the new school year starts, the Summer Bridge students have already made their mark on the middle schools and high schools they’ll be attending. Rising sixth graders created pavers painted with scenes that arose from social-emotional lessons with school counselors and rising freshmen designed projects to add to their new campuses.

Janiyah and her Summer Bridge classmates laid pavers in the courtyard at Frink before their tour.

“That helps them make a connection with their new school,” Harrell said. “They can walk by that for years to come and say, ‘Hey, I did that my first year here.’ ”