Practically everyone has moved at least once – to a new city, new home, or new job. Every move is both distressing and exciting. Will you be received well? Will you find new friends? Will you be happy? First impressions are important and so is the reception you receive. Students and their families feel the same mix of anxiety and excitement when entering a new school.
NNPS guides Action Teams for Partnerships to conduct smooth and memorable transitions that welcome students to a new educational adventure and welcome families as key partners in their child’s educational journey. Many schools do this well when students move from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school. It also is important to conduct successful transitions when students and families enter preschool or elementary school. The following are a few examples from Promising Partnership Practices 2008 activities that were implemented to ease the early transitions to new schools.
Entering Preschool
Head Start, Early Childhood Centers, and other early care and education settings must welcome young children and their families. Good information can ease parents’ worries so that they and their children will love school. Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center in Peoria, IL hosts a New Parent Orientation to fulfill a goal in its School Improvement Plan – empowering parents to be involved. To ensure that all parents have vital information about the school and their children’s learning and development, this activity is mandatory. Registration of students (birth to age 6) is not complete unless a parent has attended the orientation session.
Entering Elementary School
Students and families enter kindergarten from highly diverse preschool experiences or straight from home. The new school is usually larger and more structured than the preschool. A good transition will calm fears, address concerns, and share the joy of the new school. Teachers, administrators, district leaders, and community partners all can play welcoming roles, as in these examples.
Maple Elementary School in Cambridge, MD conducted a Whistle Stop Tour on a late summer day. Teachers and administrators boarded a bus traveled through their students’ communities. Families met the bus at various stops to greet the teachers and administrators. They received information about their children’s transition or return to school. As one grandparent said, “We know you really care about our kids because you came to us.” Students received hugs and freeze pops from the teachers, which helped put them at ease about entering or returning to school.
At Ranchview Elementary in Naperville, IL, 100 new students and their parents came to the New Family Orientation Evening a week before school opened. Student council members served as guides, along with teachers and parent leaders. Activities included taking photos of entering families, touring the school, conducting activities for new students while parents attended a video and information session, and offering refreshments and a school-linked gift bag. The orientation welcomed new members to the school community and celebrated the school.
District leaders for partnerships in Saint Paul Public Schools worked with the Mayor’s office, library, and community groups on Blast Off to Kindergarten. They created a unified website for parents of entering students and distributed information-filled back packs to about 5000 students entering kindergarten. A school calendar, information on school programs, ideas for reading aloud, and ways to help students appreciate other students from diverse cultures, and other items helped parents prepare their children for the first day of school.
Plan Transition Activities
All schools in NNPS should plan good transitions for students and families who are leaving or entering the school. ATPs may use Page 3 of the One-Year Action Plan for Partnerships to focus on transitions with the goal of improving students’ adjustment and attitudes to school. If Page 3 focuses on a different behavioral goal (e.g., attendance or health), ATPs may include transition activities on Page 4 of the plan, as part of creating a welcoming partnership school. It also helps for “feeder” and “receiver” school teams to work together to ensure smooth transitions from one learning environment to the next.
Read about these and other ideas for transitions to all school levels in the annual collections of Promising Partnership Practices at www.partnershipschools.org in the section Success Stories.
Also, see the transitions planning template on the CD with the new edition of Handbook for Action.
Brenda G. Thomas
bthomas@csos.jhu.edu