Helping Students Transition Between Schools
June 26, 2009
As any new kid in class can attest, transferring from one school to another is more traumatic than it is adventurous"especially when the transition occurs in the middle of the school year.
New town, new teachers, new classmates, new rules and a new social system can be a dizzying experience for uprooted students. At-risk children, who often already struggle to make friends and passing grades, need time to bond with faculty members. Teachers are often a new student's first line of defense.
Before Lillie Jefferson, 59, came out of retirement to tutor math students at Ketelsen Elementary School and Sterling High School in Houston, Texas, she was an inner-city algebra teacher with high standards and a flair for putting kids at ease.
Jefferson, who received her B.A. in education from the University of Houston in 1970, got her master's degree 36 years later from Walden University so she could serve as a consultant for Houston public schools, aiming to keep their curricula consistent across the city.
"There are always areas where a teacher falls short," says Jefferson. "Teachers tend to teach the subject as they learned it years ago, even though there are itty-bitty quirks and changes that have surfaced that maybe they haven't grasped yet."
As an educator at a last-chance public high school, Jefferson was constantly ushering in new students, many of whom were transferred mid-year because of poor grades and disruptive behavior.
Her first priority was to meet the student's parent or caregiver to explain what she specifically expected from the child in class.
Next, she would ask the student how she felt about mathematics, whether she was comfortable with the subject, or if she felt she might need after-school help.
Jefferson even arranged her classroom in a non-threatening way, pushing her large office desk to one corner of the room and using it to store paperwork rather than as a place to sit and command.
When one 15-year-old student, who had relocated in the middle of the year from Florida, began to struggle in Jefferson's class, Jefferson approached the student's physical education teacher to ask if the teen could spend 30 more minutes in remedial math, in exchange for 30 fewer minutes of gym time.
However, her most successful teaching tool covered two bases at once"academic proficiency and socialization. When a new student entered Jefferson's classroom mid-year, she would pair up them with a well-adjusted peer mentor to help catch them up on past material.
"Some students are introverts, some are extroverts," says Jefferson. "Teachers need to make sure that all their students become a part of the fabric."
Peer mentors extended Jefferson's reach in the classroom. No matter how difficult Jefferson's lessons got, students with peer mentors felt that they had a friend in their corner.
"A mentor might sit next to a student in class and help guide them through a lesson," says Jefferson "They might encourage a student to stay after school for tutoring, or they might just reassure them that they're doing OK. All of this puts the teacher in a neutral position, which is important because you always want a student to feel they can come to you with questions."
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COMMENTS
If you were given a new student in the middle of the school year, how would you help him to acclimate? What kind of qualities would you look for in a peer mentor?
Leave your response in the comments below.