Gr 8 Transitions Visits to SJAM

I am very fortunate to be involved in the planning and delivery of our transitions visits for grade 8 students intending to come to SJAM in September...
In addition to tours of our facilities and observations of key elective classes, we offered the students the opportunity to voice their thoughts/concerns.

We gave them a google survey to let us know what " A good teacher will" do.
See the survey...
We used their voice to create this wordle.



On a projector, the students used their own devices and accessed Todaysmeet.com (live for a bit longer at http://todaysmeet.com/SJAM) to inform us about what "A good student will" do.


On laptops, students could post a sticky at padlet.com to give us information about how we could help them adjust to SJAM.

Created with Padlet

Our last station was a large paper for a marker graffiti activity... we asked "what clubs and Activities would you like to do when you come to SJAM?" I will post some images soon... 

One more school... tomorrow.  I will update all of our info after that!  :)

This has been a great experience! 

All of this info will go a long way to inform our activities in the new school year.

'Whatever it takes'

A student is "in risk". He is failing more than one class. Life at his home is far less than adequate. He has asked for help. To some it may not appear that he is looking to improve his academic situation and ultimately his life circumstance. He has no positive adult role models in his home life. At school, naturally, he looks to his peers.  He perhaps sees a glimmer of an alternate future in a couple of adults that he chooses to trust. But how?  how does a young teen make the decision to turn on all that he knows so that he can follow a path that leads away from his family, away from his friends, away from poverty, drugs and gangs?  He asks for help.. but clearly knows not what to expect or what lengths he needs to work through.   Some adults in the building have long since given up on him.

I admire his courage. I know he will have setbacks. He needs to know that he has support. I can only imagine that it cannot be easy for him particularly when other adults put up barriers for this teen.  They don't know it, but any "small" barrier, could change his motivation to make a difference in his own life.

I have learned that for success with teens we need to embrace the "whatever it takes" attitude.