For mostly financial reasons, people who live in the inner city are often left out of opportunities presented to people living elsewhere. Everyone is effected. Living in the inner city effects all families, elderly couples and young working class members, but nobody is effected more than children. Growing up as a child in the inner city is certainly a challenge. These kids don't have adequate facilities to grow up in a healthy manner. Parks aren't well kept streets are dirty and above all, the education they are offered is inexcusably poor. For most kids a solid education is perhaps their only chance to get off the streets, out of the city so that they can create a better situation for their own kids. But if these inner city kids aren't given the same educational opportunities as other kids, then they can never get out and the problem just grows.
I have spent time working in a program aimed at helping these inner city students who have the desire to achieve more than they are allowed to in the typical city school environment. The program is called Summerbridge and it's geared towards self motivated students who are looking to get extra academic assistance, in the hope that they can get into a strong high school and ultimately to college. It's not an easy program to commit to since it's at least eight hours a day of rigorous academic training. Until I met the students in the program, I couldn't imagine that there were any middle school students that would opt for school instead of a relaxing summer playing with friends. But this was not the only thing that surprised me about this group of motivated kids.
Recruiting wonderful teachers for the program is the most important part of maximizing everyone's summer experience in Summerbridge. The teachers are high school and college students from all over the nation. They will come together in one of the roughly twenty-one cities where the program is offered. Sacramento is where I worked for Summerbridge in its second and third years of existence. Although it was started in Philadelphia seven years pervious it soon spread to San Francisco and numerous other cities. The other members of my staff were split equally between high school and college students as well as male/female. Those who apply for the program are selfless people who share a love of learning. Most have seriously considered teaching as a potential profession and are looking to gain some real classroom experience. It's definitely not the tremendous pay that brings teachers to Summerbridge since after taxes the pay is roughly twelve cents an hour. We teach because we seeing the students learn and achieve their personal goals through academic means.
Besides the amazing and highly motivated faculty that Summerbridge draws, the students are a close second in making the program a success. Turning over three entire summers in a row in sixth, seventh and eighth grade is not an easy decision. I know that I would think twice before committing to three summers of academic pursuit at that age. But these students aren't your average kids. What could possibly draw kids from their summer fun back into the classroom?
While recruiting the students in their respective middle schools few seem interested when the idea if first presented to them. But heads look up and eyes open when the kids find out that it's other kids who are going to be the teachers. Suddenly school takes a fun twist and the students bring energy to their academics because their teachers inspire them. Students in Summerbridge come from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but all of them have two important things in common. They all live in the inner city and are all motivated and determined to use academic success as their golden ticket to improve their living situation. All are hard working in school but because the teachers are not good and the facilities are poor, the training they receive in school alone isn't enough to change their situation.
That's where Summerbridge comes in. As a faculty we are committed with the students to give them the academic skills they need in order to get into a better high schools in the area. By teaching general academic skills in a variety of subjects the students do far better th~n their middle school peers and are ready to shine when taking entrance exams for high school. As a teacher I taught writing through literature, French, math and physical education. Other classes the students took included history (European and American) biology, physics and chemistry.
I'll never forget my first day as a teacher in Summerbridge. Standing in front of a full classroom of students who were all eager to learn about writing through literature. I didn't know what to say. I was sweating and very worried that they were all going to think I was a horrible teacher. But I dove right into the material and never looked back. I slowed at times to ensure that all the students were with me, but all the while kept the classes moving along. As a teacher I was totally in charge of my class and really didn't have to answer to anyone. I was free to make my own lesson plans and make up activities that I felt would be best for the students understanding and learning. Students acted out books as they read them aloud in class and made sandwiches to better understand how to give instructions in a written form. These are classroom activities that are typically not included in public middle schools. The student's energy increased with each class they attended.
Yet the learning that took place for Summerbridge students extended for beyond the walls of a classroom. Each Wednesday there was special programming for the students which allowed them to learn other important life skills. One Wednesday at a ropes course the students learned the importance of working in groups to achieve a common goal. You may wonder how kids could get to middle school without working in-groups but this was a different sort of working together. On the streets of the city these kids all pick up clues from older siblings and parents. Inter racial mixing on the streets is not often smiled upon. There is constant pressure for these kids to join gangs, which are composed of members of their race. Even at their regular schools gang pressures are high and students tend to roll in clicks of friends from their own race. On the ropes course at Summerbridge students are placed in inter racial groups. It's the first time for many kids that they are forced to trust their safety to members of another race. This sense of trust carries back to their regular schools and soon clicks are broken. Administrators in the Summerbridge program often receive calls from public school officials thanking them for helping with the gang problems and student relations on their campus.
Other special programming gives the Sacramento Summerbridge students a chance to explore their state capitol. Again the students are put in teams and this time they are racing to finish a challenging scavenger hunt which requires them to learn how to use the resources the capitol building has to offer. While looking for clues the kids learn about Californian history, speak with governmental officials and begin to understand basic political issues. The special programming opens doors to a world of learning in a fun safe environment outside of the classroom that students can apply in their day to day lives.
Finding a place to start a Summerbridge program can often be difficult because of facilities conflicts. You need to have all day access to many classrooms, hopefully art facilities and athletic facilities as well. Public schools often don't have adequate facilities and supplies for such a program. Eyes then turn to private schools with better buildings and hopefully the generosity to let a Summerbridge program call it home. In all cases I know of, Summerbridge programs are indeed run out of private high schools, which are generous enough to share their facilities with students pursuing academic achievement.
Funding for Summerbridge is much more of a challenge than finding appropriate facilities. It's a non-profit organization which is nice in that it costs a little less to run but ultimately the costs are sill high and money is hard to come by. The main source of income is from other businesses, which are inspired by the cause enough to contribute money. Grants are written to these businesses explaining what the program is about, its goals and a proposal of exactly how the requested funding would be allocated. Frequently presidents of these companies request meetings with past faculty from other programs so as to get a better understanding of where their money is going. More often that not, after meeting with charismatic faculty members, companies do contribute a bit of money though not always a significant amount. In the last several years the states themselves have started to contribute more to funding Summerbridge programs. I know that the Sacramento program recently received a grant from the California Board of Education promising them eight hundred thousand dollars for the next three summers. So as positive results of the program are becoming common knowledge there is increasing support to keep Summerbridge funded and growing.
As the summer passes by the students become closer to one another, but they also build long lasting friendships with the teachers. Typically the teachers don't think twice about passing on their home phone numbers to the students so that if any problems or questions arise with homework they can get an answer. But more often than not, when a student calls it's not homework related. They call to talk to teachers about their lives, school, whatever is going on that seems to be significant. Personal relationships build during the summer between students and teachers are beneficial to the program and often continue year round.
Two students who I grew especially close to during the summer are still today two of my best friends. They were two of our top students who wanted badly to go to high school at the private school where Summerbridge Sacramento was located. When they started as freshman I was a senior at the same school so fortunately for me, the friendship could easily continue. We became teammates in varsity sports and worked side by side on community service projects. Their roll in the program has recently gone full circle. They started in the first year that Summerbridge was in Sacramento as sixth graders. They were our first graduates of the program and after getting settled in their new high school environment, both of them applied to be teachers for the following summer.
Each summer ends with an emotional ceremony called Celebration. During Celebration both the faculty and students put on performances for their families and special friends of the program. It's a very emotional time for everyone. The students cry as they say goodbye to their favorite teachers who might be from the East Coast and will perhaps not see again for a long while. I remember a phone call I made to one of our best students about half an hour before Celebration was supposed to begin. He was one of five people in a singing group that had planned to start the show with a song they had written about the faculty. When I got him on the phone he was crying so much he could barely speak. He told me that he couldn't come because it would be too emotional to say goodbye in front of everyone and that he couldn't handle it. This
student's strong emotion about Celebration was not atypical. Everyone cried when the summer finished.
Occasionally, people who have not experienced the program first hand have questions about how much Summerbridge really benefits the community. They worry that the most highly motivated students come to the program and then leave their district for better high schools, leaving the poor high schools no better off and without their top-level students. But this is not the case. It turns out that very few of the Summerbridge graduates leave their districts at all. Sometimes there are students who are admitted to top level private schools and do leave their districts, but they are benefiting those schools, which would otherwise go without the perspectives of inner city students. Most graduates stay in their districts and work hard to improve the schools they attend. They improve the success rate of weaker schools and inspire their peers to work hard with them. Overall, Sacramento high schools have greatly benefited from the Summerbridge program and the graduates of the program are well in their way towards the college degree that they desire so greatly.