summer support services
Summerbridge
We believe it is important to identify entering 9 th grade students who need additional support to make a strong start for themselves in high school. Using incoming data including students’ grades, attendance records, and information from guidance counselors and parents, SLJ runs an in-depth program to acclimate incoming students and prepare them for success in high school. Research suggests that students who are successful in ninth grade are up to five times as likely to graduate as their peers who are not. SLJ’s Summerbridge program targets students most at-risk and uses proven methods to ramp them up for high school.
Academic Readiness: Students work closely with teachers to get in-depth support and one-on-one attention before the start of school. Students who participate in Summerbridge are able to learn early a set of academic skills and strategies they will encounter and need to master as ninth grade students. Graduates of Summerbridge report that an early introduction to these skills and strategies made them more confident and successful in their classes at the start of the year.
Social/Emotional Acculturation: Students come to SLJ from all over the city where they have had varied educational experiences. Some may be ready for the rigor of the coursework, but not for the serious tone of the school. Helping students develop an academic identity by working with mentor peers and their teachers over the summer can set them up for success. In addition, this kind of small summer program makes sure that students who have historically slipped through the cracks develop meaningful and supportive relationships with peers and staff. SLJ’s teachers and counselors use this time to develop relationships with students and their families so that the sense of support is clear to them from the moment they begin high school.
Credit Recovery & Regents prep
SLJ’s summer credit recovery program is founded on three main understandings:
(1) Students who are left back are far less likely to matriculate than those who are not.
We therefore dedicate a summer program to the students who need credits in order to move to the next grade. Supporting students on the edge helps to ensure that they do not encounter the discouragement and frustration that comes from repeating a grade while ensuring that they get the skills and do the work needed for promotion.
(2) If something didn’t work before, it is unlikely that doing the same thing will be effective now.
With this understanding, we make sure that the program at SLJ looks and feels different. SLJ’s summer credit recovery plan is a chance for students to get a hands-on, student-centered, in-depth, and interdisciplinary approach to the topic at hand. Instead of taking an hour-long class, students are in school from 9am to 1pm, during which they are immersed in an intensely interactive mixed-media curriculum that emphasizes real world-relevance, relates topics largely by cultural example, and is primarily student-driven.
(3) Summer credit recovery and targeted intervention need to get to the root of the issue.
The summer affords us greater time to analyze and diagnose student performance and issues. The school social worker, deans’ office, principal, and teachers work in collaboration to identify the source of student issues and tackle those. Student and family meetings are arranged, additional and individual tutoring sessions are set up, and students have time and support to analyze their choices and make plans for better choices in the coming year.
In a typical summer, over 50 students and families are seen by the school for individual sessions and 20 students are able to accumulate enough credits that they may be promoted to the next grade.
AP Camp
Advanced Placement (AP) Camp was established when SLJ’s teachers identified a clear lack of specific AP-level skills among rising seniors who, with the proper help, could otherwise succeed in advanced course work. Says AP English teacher Liza Potter, “Students had to learn to read college-level texts. And the AP Language course is non-fiction-based, whereas our students were more accustomed to fiction. They needed to know how to approach a text, take it apart, annotate it.”
An intensive summer prep class, dubbed AP Camp, is required for students who, the previous spring, enroll in one or more AP courses. SLJ’s partner law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, hosts the program for seven hours a day over the course of a week in August. “Having it at Cravath helps,” Potter points out. “Right away it sets the tone that this is serious work.” Together students completely read and analyze a non-fiction text, usually one with interdisciplinary appeal (Stephen D. Levitt’s Freakonomics, for example, is relevant to the AP English and AP Microeconomics curricula). “We are able to add a whole extra book to the curriculum that we otherwise wouldn’t have read,” Potter says.
In a short span of time students drill and master AP skills and sit for a full-length practice exam. The 35-hour experience, equal to four weeks of ordinary class time, is also essential in light of the AP calendar. “The tests are given in May,” the teachers note. “That’s a month before the end of the year; a month before students usually take Regents exams.” To Potter, the impact is obvious. She observes that “the first day of class in September does not feel at all like the first day.” The syllabus is already read. The tone set. A substantial amount of work done. What greets students on their first day? “I give a test,” Potter boasts.
In the past, students with summer conflicts who missed AP Camp were not nearly as adept at handling difficult texts. They could not easily analyze what they’d read. And, just as importantly, they had not been indoctrinated into the “culture of seriousness and professionalism” that the rest of the group established jointly in August. Come September, their teachers claim, they needed a lot of extra help. AP Camp is now required for AP-enrolled students. It is an essential component of a responsible and truly college-preparatory AP curriculum at SLJ.