Going from being among the oldest, most “senior” students to landing at the proverbial bottom rung of the academic and social ladder can feel like a swift and startling descent for even the most self-assured student. Tack on adolescents’ frequently awkward and turbulent physical transitions and surging hormones, plus the increased academic expectations in middle or high school, and the experience can quickly become overwhelming.
Acclimating can be slow, and for those who fail to find their way that first year, rebounding can prove difficult. Students who struggle in 9th grade and receive poor grades are at far greater risk than their peers of eventually dropping out of school altogether, according to research. Even the most well-adjusted students could use additional support—especially initially.
Former high school teacher Mary Beth Campbell saw firsthand the unique challenges that 9th graders face. She also saw what she felt were well-meaning but often ineffective attempts to orient students to their new academic home. She decided to try to do something about it.
With fellow former teacher Carolyn Hill, Campbell in 2004 launched the Boomerang Project, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based educational consulting company that trains middle- and high-school educators on how to create a positive school climate for new students. The training leans heavily on mentorship, but with a twist: It trains educators on how to prepare older students—those in their final year of either middle or high school—to serve as mentors to incoming students.
Education Week recently spoke with Campbell. She shared why peer leaders can help new students transition successfully to middle and high school and how schools can go about fostering those relationships. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What should educators understand about the transition to middle or high school?
I think for a long time, we have looked at high school and middle school transitions as separate from any other transition in our lives. But what I’ve come to realize is that whether you’re dealing with being a 9th grader on the first day of school or the death of a loved one, it’s still a transition. And the kind of support you need is really the same whether you’re going to a new school or through any other transition in life.
What do you perceive as the “non-negotiables” needed for a successful transition?
You need to feel safe, you need information about the transition, and you need a connection to get access to safety and information. Once we put that together, [my business partner and I] realized that if we offered high school freshmen and 6th graders those three things, that their chances for success would exponentially grow.
Should educators be the ones to provide these things to transitioning students?
We as educators try to offer these things to incoming students as they transition. We try to make them feel safe. We try to make them feel as though they have a connection to the school. We try to give them information that’s going to help them be successful. A lot of schools will do a big “rah rah,” “hello,” “welcome to our school,” and “here’s all the rules,” and then you’re done. But that doesn’t really make kids feel safe, and it certainly doesn’t give them enough information. We do it through our adult lens, and kids don’t always want to listen to adults. It’s the Charlie Brown effect: “wah, wah, wah.”
What information do incoming students want?
The information they want includes things like, Will I make friends? Where am I going to eat lunch? Am I going to get made fun of? That’s the kind of information that they want to know.
Where should this information come from?
Who do adolescents listen to? Their peers. Early on, when we were still teaching high school and before we started training other educators, we started tapping the upper-grade students, and we told them: You’re going to help us welcome these students on the first day of school, and then you’re going to actually stay connected to them throughout the year.
You also mention safety. Talk about what that looks like from an adolescent student’s perspective.
As adults, we think of safety in terms of physical [safety], answering questions like, Do we have metal detectors? Are there cameras in every building? Do we have security officers outside? Of course, these things are important. But a student coming into school on the first day generally isn’t looking around and wondering if there’s enough security cameras. They’re wondering, Am I going to get bullied? Am I going to feel safe walking down the hallway? Am I going to feel safe alone in the bathroom? Am I going to feel safe when I’m eating lunch? That’s what they’re wondering.
So, what does this look like in practice?
Well, you can only really access safety and information if you have a connection with somebody. That’s the system we have set up with our training programs. We give every freshman and every 6th grader a peer mentor. We call them leaders, and they help new students understand the information they need and what makes them feel safe. Because it’s coming from a peer, they’re far more willing to listen.
Are there certain traits you suggest educators look for as they identify peer mentors?
You need students from every single social group because ultimately, when a student comes into school, they’re looking for somebody that looks like them. A lot of schools will do an assembly for the new kids at the beginning of the school year and, generally, the students represented there come from the cheer squad, or they’re the student council kids. And if I’m an incoming student and I’m not that kid, I don’t see myself. So that’s why the leaders who are helping with the transition program have to represent a cross section of the school.
What are other traits for selecting peer leaders?
They cannot be over-committed, because what we find is that if you get a kid who’s doing everything, the first thing that falls off is this commitment. So they can’t be overly committed, and they have to be kind.
How important is it that this peer mentorship starts at the beginning of the school year?
Again, looking through the eyes of adults, we often think the first day is about registration. But kids don’t really care about registration. The first day of school should be about establishing relationships rather than registration. New students really want to see where they fit in, where they belong, and who they’re going to connect with, because study after study shows that if kids are connected to school and they’re connected to people in school, they perform better.
What are some ways a peer mentor can calm new students’ first-day jitters?
Here are some examples. If, on the first day of school a new student sees their leader, they know that that’s a safe place that they can go. And mentors are trained not to wait for new students to approach them; we encourage leader-initiated contact. We tell peer leaders that, for instance, if they see any new student looking lost in the hall, they might ask them, “Hey, how’s your first day going?” They’re trained to know that, as an 8th grade leader, they should also feel a certain level of responsibility for all the 6th graders.
How important is it that peer leaders connect with new students throughout the year?
In our program, peer leaders are actually trained to teach lessons to their group of new students. The lessons can be anywhere from having great study skills to how to make friendships that last to having honor and integrity or how to study for tests. So there’s a variety of lessons that the leaders actually go in and teach to the 6th graders or the 9th graders. The leaders also stay connected to their group through social activities throughout the year.
What are some final takeaways educators should know about peer mentorship?
We need to trust our students more than we actually do. A lot of people talk about teenagers and say that they’re apathetic, that they don’t care. The bottom line is that students aren’t apathetic. They’re uninvited. And if we invite them and show them we trust them, they’ll show up. If you create the structure for kids to be kind, and you create the structure for students to mentor each other, and you create the structure for students to show up for each other, they will do it.
