Welcoming Faces Chase Middle School’S Web Program Helps Youths Adjust To Life As Seventh-Graders

A new program at Chase Middle School promises to ease new students’ transitions through the school year.

The program, called WEB (Welcome Every Body), teams seventh-graders with two mature eighth-grade students selected by teachers.

The veteran middle schoolers help their charges adjust to life at Chase by showing them around, introducing them to the social scene and offering advice throughout the school year.

New students feel better because the WEB teams provide an instant network of friends who make them feel accepted, according to large school facilitator Maureen Chene, one of four WEB program coordinators at Chase.

“We want them to feel welcome and a part of the school,” she said.

On Friday, for instance, eighth-grader Brittany Hale was preparing to take her group of nine seventh-graders to a school dance that evening.

“At my first dance, I didn’t know that many people, so last night I called and invited the whole group,” she said. Most agreed to go.

The seventh grade is recognized as a difficult year for students. Almost teens, the students are undergoing physical and emotional changes while adapting to a dramatic shift in their schooling - a larger facility with more classmates, courses and teachers.

Razzing from eighth-graders doesn’t help, either.

“Most of them are nice,” said new seventhgrader Sarah Lyman, 12. “But sometimes you hear some of them say things like, `Dang, look at all those sevies.”

Sevies is somewhat belittling slang for seventhgraders.

“They should have a name, if you ask me,” she said. Such stresses leave many students at risk of becoming alienated from school and developing negative behaviors, such as absenteeism and poor study habits, educators say.

WEB is intended to prevent those behaviors before problems occur, Chene said.

Phil Boyte, an education consultant from California, developed the program. Chase Middle school is the first in the Spokane School District to implement WEB.

Boyte also developed Link Crew, an equivalent high school program that Ferris High School adopted last year.

“We have a great opportunity because we feed into Ferris,” Chene said. Chase students who benefited from WEB will make a good transition into Link Crew, she said.