I'm Tyler Turner, a Junior Bonner at Rhodes. Last year, I used my Bonner Summer of Service to serve as a teacher with Breakthrough Collabrative in Manchester, New Hampshire. The experience radically transformed my life and if I am going to talk about what it has meant to me to be a Bonner, I have to share about Breakthrough.Breakthrough Collaborative is an idea; it is the notion that we can build an ideal school that gives underprivileged middle-schoolers the resources they need to succeed in high school and beyond while giving high school and college students interested in teaching the opportunity to plan, teach, and manage their own classroom. This summer, I taught two classes of 7th grade English. Following guidelines quite similar to state guidelines for 7th grade English curricula, I spent hours planning a six-week plan of how to teach over 30 concepts. The broad objectives included paragraph and essay writing, active reading skills, question-answer relationships, elements of literature, vocabulary, and grammar.
In addition to academic prepare of students for high school, college, and beyond, our goal was to prepare students for much larger risk factors that might stunt or prevent their growth. In reality, our ideal school was more about developing a community. Although some schools incorporate a sense of community into their work, the community that is built at Breakthrough is unlike any school the students have ever attended. For the community, this is not school…it’s too different from a school to be called that. In my opinion (and that of most the community), the students and teachers learn more at Breakthrough than they ever would in a “regular” school environment. For this reason, we talk about Breakthrough as an idea....we are not a school, we are not a camp. We are Breakthrough.
For a week before our six weeks with students begins, the 30+ member faculty are trained by professional staff to work with students, both socially and academically. In this short week, we are trained on how to teach, why to teach, and how to build the community of learners that Breakthrough embodies. From the beginning, this establishes a cohesive and strong community amongst the faculty and professional staff. The entire school is covered with art before the students arrive. A theme is chosen, and the school is covered from wall to wall with paintings that display that theme. Throughout the summer, the theme is interwoven into everything that happens at Breakthrough. When the students arrive, classes begin, but the community also begins to take shape. We begin each day with a faculty huddle: all the teachers in the program huddle together in the school foyer to center our minds and bodies on the important task ahead of us, teaching and learning. Some days, this begins with a cheer, a game, or an activity. Other days, a moving poem is read, a faculty member shares their experiences, or advice is given by returning teachers. After huddle, we all walk outside to greet our students as their buses arrive. Each day is new: we play a game to welcome them, share facts about ourselves, take part in a themed greeting, or simply give them welcoming high-fives as they step off of the bus.
When the final bus arrives, we take our students down to breakfast/attendance. During breakfast, the faculty sits with the students so that we observe the “golden ratio”: 3 students for every 1 teacher. We are not assigned a seat, nor do we tell the students that we are trying to sit as evenly as possible throughout the room. This simple idea, however, helps to build community, keeps students and teachers accountable, and fosters communication amongst the community. In an approximately 100 person school, the director and assistant director call out every name of every student and faculty member each morning. We are not allowed to simply say “here” or “present”…each student or teacher can chose to respond by saying good morning, leading a cheer, or by saying a fact or joke. When each name is called, we are commissioned to “go teach and learn” by our directors. This phrase has stuck with me from day one and will always be a part of my life: we are never simply students or teachers—students will always be teachers and teachers should always strive to be students.
Every student gets to participate in a new extracurricular activity each week; French, Flag Football, Frisbee, Painting, and Bosnian are all examples. The students also get to preference which extracurriculars they would like to take when they sign up for classes before the summer begins. After extracurricular time, students meet with their advisers for advisory period. Each faculty member is assigned 3 students (golden ratio) to which we advise. This time is spent on homework and study skills, goal setting, action planning, and working through problems that the students might have. This is the time that is most valued at Breakthrough: the advisor is seen as the key person in the students’ academic lives throughout the summer. If a student misses class, is having trouble with assignments, or needs any type of extra assistance, the advisor is the first responder. This includes calling and writing notes home, communicating with the advisee outside of Breakthrough, and planning daily activities to keep the students engaged and focused.
After this advisory time, students load the buses and ride home to start their homework. Dismissal goes in much the same way as greeting: the entire faculty goes outside to see the buses off, wave goodbye, and chase the buses down the street. Each day, faculty members ride on the buses to help manage behavior, but to also keep the Breakthrough connection strong between the student, their home, and their community. After this long and often stressful day the faculty gathers for a faculty meeting to discuss community cares and concerns, to share kudos and snapshots, to bring up business, and to prepare for upcoming events. After the six weeks with students is over, the faculty once again spends a week alone reflecting on our work, writing evaluation letters for our advisees, and cleaning up the school.
Breakthrough substantially changed my life. I now have two GRE books sitting on my desk because I want to apply to graduate schools for Education. I start to tear up when I think of my students and how much I miss them. It makes me overly emotional when I flip through my scrapbook and read the letters that my students wrote to me on our last day together. There is no simple way to explain what the experience of 8 weeks of immersion in the educational process did to my personal, social, and academic life. I now see teaching as a legitimate profession…something I doubted only a few months ago. After Breakthrough, my prejudice towards things I don’t know nor understand has become shadowed by a love for the unknown. I have grown to love children and teaching in a way that I never knew I could. In many ways, it has taking me from being a self-loving being to seeing myself as a member of a global community. When Brian Nguyen (one of my advisees) stood up in front the entire school at Celebration (their equivalent of a graduation ceremony), I cried my eyes out because he and every other student in the school had touched me in such a profound way. Needless to say, I am emotionally bound to this program forever and will always strive to “teach and learn” because of it.
Some of the kids I served as a part of Breakthrough.
