By Diosa Adams,
Director of Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano

Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano is a program sponsored by St. Margaret’s that works to help local middle school students acquire the opportunity and skills to stay on the path to be the first in their families to graduate from college. At the same time, Breakthrough student teachers, who are enrolled in high school or college, are provided with a positive classroom experience that we hope will encourage them to consider pursuing careers in education.

Although Breakthrough has a strong summer program that you might have read about in the December 2009 issue of Highlander magazine, we support and encourage our Breakthrough participants throughout the school year as well. Last week concluded the semester of Breakthrough iN-Session!, our school-year program in which we work with Breakthrough students at Marco Forster Middle School on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Under the direction of Breakthrough Assistant Director Erica Korzep, our outstanding student teachers and tutors serve our students so that they can continue to practice the technical and organizational skills that they learned during the summer portion of the program.

After the summer, Breakthrough students were reading at an average grade level of 8.6, making all of them more than prepared for their 7th and 8th grade classes, and some were able to enroll in accelerated classes. With 13 of our 27 grade 7 students in at least one accelerated class, we are well on our way to getting our Breakthrough kids on the path to college by high school. Three students are in all four accelerated classes that are available, and they are starting with Algebra I as seventh-graders. In our grade 8 grade class, 11 of our 24 students are in Algebra I, the greatest indicator of their readiness to be on the college track. Overall, 15 students in grade 8 are in at least one accelerated course, with five of them pursuing two or more.

This school year we are focusing on a workshop-style format, in which students work on math one day and writing the other. In addition, students who need extra assistance are paired with a tutor between one and three days a week. This ensures they are receiving the assistance they need to stay on top of their classes and work toward advancing in their courses.

This semester, our students have remained focused on improving their skills, and they are being placed in more challenging classes if they found their regular course to be too easy. One of our grade 7 students asked her academic advisor if she could move out of prealgebra and into Algebra I, and her request was accepted. This level of persistence and change is challenging for many of our students to engage in and pursue, and we at Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano work hard to teach it and assist our families with embracing self-advocacy.

One of our student teachers expresses that participating in Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano “feels nice, because you don’t only help kids survive in school, but thrive.”Our teachers and tutors are always dedicated to their part in our long-term goal with each student. They are prompt, present and diligent during weekly tutoring. A second-year tutor comments, “It is truly enriching to see my own knowledge help another student progress in class. We form a bond with the students that is deeper than just numbers.”

Ms. Korzep believes that this has been a successful semester of progress due to the diligence of the Breakthrough staff, tutors, and the hard work of the students. She says, “We were able to strike a balance between homework and practice on persuasive writing with the students, and they seemed to value both ventures. In the spring, we look forward to additional connections with literature and digging deeper into exploratory learning and analysis.”

We are truly appreciative to the teachers and tutors who participate in our school-year program. Their commitment and dedication is essential to our work, as they are role models and experts on being excellent students.

Tags: Academics, Community