F E AT U R E S
Breakthrough Summerbridge: An Updated Name and an Amazing Summer — Dara Northcroft, Executive Director, Breakthrough Summerbridge
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ounded in 1978 at UHS, Summerbridge has been positively impacting the lives of ambitious middle school students and the enthusiastic college students, our Teaching Fellows, who teach them. In fact, UHS is the original site and inspiration for the Breakthrough Collaborative, which now includes a network of 24 affiliates throughout the United States. As a full affiliate of the National Breakthrough Collaborative, we share its mission to work with highly motivated, traditionally underrepresented students to achieve postsecondary success, and empower aspiring leaders to become the next generation of educators and advocates. In June 2021, we changed our name and logo to reflect the enduring and growing strength of our alliance with the Collaborative and became officially known as Breakthrough Summerbridge at San Francisco University High School.
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students, after more than a year of participating remotely, summer 2021 was a reunion with friends whom they had not seen in person since 7th grade. And our 7th- and 8th-graders—who not only had never met each other in person, but had never been on campus—cheerfully participated in the learning and community building while on campus. In response to COVID-19 restrictions and challenges, we adapted our 2020–21 summer and after-school programming into an effective and engaging online format, with a curriculum that is strongly informed by social and emotional learning (SEL). SEL not only helps our students navigate the unprecedented challenges of distance learning, but also guides them through building essential self-management skills, resilience, and meaningful and supportive connections with one another.
Providing a program that allowed students and faculty to interact in person was very important to us and was at the heart of our planning for this summer. Through the enduring support of UHS, we were able to ensure that resources were in place to ensure safe in-person programming by way of a “Virtual +” (Virtual Plus) model where students had their classes virtually three days a week and joined us on campus one or two days a week for our communitybuilding classes and activities. It was a unique and exciting summer for all of us!
In addition to providing students and families with one-on-one support, our counselor—who is also a licensed therapist—led the development of enhanced SEL programming, which was first implemented in summer 2021 and will continue in after-school programming and in subsequent summers. This programming and curriculum includes new lesson plans for grade-level classes, professional development and resources for faculty and Teaching Fellows to further integrate SEL strategies into lessons and activities, and workshops to provide families with tools to support their children.
The most heartwarming part of the summer was seeing students interacting in person with their classmates. For our 9th-grade
Our summer faculty was fantastic! All of our Instructional Coaches either had served as an Instructional Coach or a Teaching
U H S J o u r n a l | FALL 2021
