The incoming student leaders in the Where Everybody Belongs program at all four Westerville middle schools got their first taste of training just days before the end of the school year.
As part of Spring Play Day, students connected with each other through team-building and ice-breaker activities as well as several games of tag — the same games they will manage when they welcome next year’s sixth-graders to school in the fall.
“Today is all about having fun and getting to know each other and building up WEB as a team and getting them excited about fall training,” said Amy Weinrich, counselor and WEB coordinator at Blendon.
Friday’s festivities offered a return to some normalcy for the WEB program, a year-long transition initiative to welcome sixth-graders to middle school. Last year’s training was virtual with WEB leaders connecting via live-streamed orientations.
The WEB program, which started at Blendon in 2017 before rolling out to the other middle schools the following year, hails from The Boomerang Project, a California-based educational consulting company that trains educators to facilitate peer mentorship at their schools using leadership and group development methodologies. The Westerville Education Challenge, which raises awareness and supports social-emotional learning initiatives in the district, provided funds to bring the WEB program to all middle schools.
Each middle school has WEB coordinators who have completed an intense three-day training to be certified to run the program in their building. The coordinators train the eighth-grade WEB leaders over the summer, who are then assigned to a small group (as many as a dozen) of sixth graders they'll be paired up with all school year.
WEB leaders provide support throughout the year, whether it’s giving campus tours to new students, tutoring those who are struggling academically or visiting classrooms to lead discussions on time management, teamwork and other life skills.