The Bridge Model is characterized by collaboration, student progress tracking, and data sharing among a family of schools across educational levels for the purpose of preparing all students in the cohort for college.
Program components include hosting events like the Regional Family Engagement night, focused on bringing families from the entire Valley Elk Grove region together to focus on student success strategies. All students in the 5th-9th grade and their families were targeted with a heavy emphasis on engaging students in providing successful strategies. Families took part in success strategy sessions featuring AVID, successful study habits, and high school leadership students that served as mentors for the evening, andfamily engagement tutorials by community leaders, and GEAR UP staff presentations.
The Bridge Project is working throughout the Valley region in Elk Grove Unified School District in a myriad of ways, one of which being the implementaiton of the ‘Core Values’ program which includes a character development program that discusses integrity, perserverance, indomitable spirit, and other character traits and all of the activities have a physical outlet to them so that they are fun. The Core Values program culminates with a ‘Random Acts of Kindness’ competition that puts the Core Values theories into action.
The rationale for this the Bridge Project emanates from the experience of the last six years in which the California GEAR UP Program began implementing a model of direct services to a cohort of students at one middle and high school and builds on the success of this previous model.
The bridge project is working with a feeder pattern of seven schools schools in Elk Grove Unified School District to truly ‘build a bridge’ for student success. We will continue to keep you updated on this component of California GEAR UP over the next 6 years.
For more information on the Bridge Project component of California GEAR UP, please email Crystal Robinson, Project Manager: Crystal.Robinson@ucop.edu