Editorial: A boost to confidence

Friday, Aug. 5, 2005 | 9:03 a.m.

The transition from elementary school to middle school can be a vulnerable time for young students. The friends they've grown close to over the past five or six years are dispersed into a school twice the size of the one they've grown comfortable with. The bigness and strangeness of their new school can make them feel alone and afraid. They can be intimidated and sometimes negatively influenced by the bigger kids. It's a time in which identity crises and peer pressure can lead to wrong choices in friends and behavior.

Swainston Middle School Assistant Principal Ed Pfeiffer recognized this and suggested holding a "transition camp" at the school. His idea was then funded by the Clark County Education Association, the union that represents most local teachers. All of the expected 400 new students coming in to the North Las Vegas campus were invited to participate and about 100 were able to attend.

The transition camp, which began Monday and runs mornings through next week, is new to the Clark County School District. It allows kids to learn their way around the large school, whose enrollment is more than 1,600. It also provides the students with instruction on how to use the library, how to study, how to manage their time and what teachers will be expecting of them. Although the school's design minimizes contact between older and younger students, there is still the potential for conflicts in the lunch lines and outside the building, so the camp even offers lessons about how to deal with bullies.

The Swainston Transition Camp will be a one-time event unless a steady source of funding is found. We'd like to see enough donations to bring this program to all the middle schools, as we believe it would have a positive impact on behavior and achievement levels.