BREAKTHROUGH SUMMERBRIDGE: AN UPDATED NAME AND AN AMAZING SUMMER

Breakthrough Summerbridge:

An Updated Name and an Amazing Summer

— Dara Northcroft, Executive Director, Breakthrough Summerbridge

Founded 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.

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!

The most heartwarming part of the summer was seeing students interacting in person with their classmates. For our 9th-grade 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.

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.

Our summer faculty was fantastic! All of our Instructional Coaches either had served as an Instructional Coach or a Teaching

Fellow in previous years or had been a Summerbridge student when they were in middle school. In fact, Corey, one of our summer faculty members, was a Summerbridge alumnus who became a Teaching Fellow, then decided on a career as a teacher, and then joined us as an Instructional Coach—the trifecta!

With the support of the Instructional Coaches, our bright and talented Teaching Fellows did an excellent job at planning and teaching the academic classes and leading our spirited event days. On remote learning days, they implemented a variety of interactive webbased activities that engage students in their learning, and on on-campus days, lessons included science labs, where students observed both virtual and in-person labs and practiced good scientific habits, observation, and analysis. Math classes allowed students to solve math problems through critical thinking and error analysis, and to extend their conceptual knowledge to real-world situations. Novels were at the center of humanities classes in which, through the intersection of literature and history, students learned about characters through a historical lens, through writing, discussing, and using textual evidence to answer prompts. Additionally, our 8th-graders took a high school advising class, which taught them about the application process, prepared them for writing personal statements, and helped them practice their interview skills.

A highlight of every Summerbridge summer is our Friday event days. With our “Virtual +” programming, students came to campus on alternating Fridays, by grade level. During all-school meetings, clubs within each grade level presented skits, led cheers, and competed for Spirit Points. Afterward, students participated in fun activities, such as carnival games, movie day, and a mini-Olympics. College and Career Day this year was part virtual and part in-person. Our 9th-graders, who were on campus that day, learned about the collegegoing experience and about a variety of careers; our 7th- and 8th-graders had a similar experience, but virtually. What made the event special was that most of the presenters were Summerbridge alumni or current Teaching Fellows.

We ended our summer with Celebration, during which we shared highlights of the summer and heard speeches from some of our 9th-graders as they reflected on their Summerbridge experiences and memories. The evening culminated with faculty singing to the students and graduating our 9th-graders, sending them well wishes for their journey into high school and beyond.

Supporting and encouraging a growth mindset and increasing “Summerbridge is very important to me because in the future it will help me get into good schools. Even though the start of SB was virtual, it really felt like everyone cared about the students’ education, and I really appreciate that.” (8th-grader)

“Breakthrough is an amazing program that has helped a ton of people reach their dreams.” (9th-grader)

“Breakthrough Summerbridge is not a phase; it’s a lifestyle. What I mean by this is, this program has helped me so much that my time here is something I will always remember and take with me. Many skills I’ve used and learned here, I will take on with me for the rest of my life.” (9th-grader)

“Breakthrough Summerbridge is a community. I never really knew much about being part of a larger community. Being part of this community means that we always support each other, and our friends will always be here for us. The teachers are always here to answer our questions, and it always feels like they’re your friend and teacher. That makes me feel like Breakthrough is the biggest and most welcoming community I’ve ever been a part of.” (9th-grader)

student confidence academically and socially were at the core of our summer programming. Our students worked collaboratively, listened attentively, responded insightfully, wrote thoughtfully, solved mathematically, hypothesized scientifically, participated enthusiastically, helped others empathically, and laughed heartily. Kudos to our students and to the faculty who supported them in this journey. They all embodied the Breakthrough Summerbridge spirit! n