A Three Step Strategy for Intentional Student Transitions

Transitions are important. Often we lose students when their transition from one level to another is uncomfortable or awkward. Even lifetime churchgoers can feel like first-time visitors when it’s time to move up to a new class. Intentional student transitions help to ensure that the transition doesn’t become an exit.

Middle School to High School

In his chapter in The Greenhouse Project (Welcome to Varsity: Transitioning Students from Middle School to High School), Tom Phillips points out some important and often overlooked differences between middle school students and high school students.

• Generally middle school students cannot compete with high school students in activities and athletic competitions.
• Friendships between your high school students will be generally a lot closer and more meaningful than the middle school students.
• Middle school students will need short-term, easy-to-reach goals, whereas high school students can accomplish longer-term goals.
• Be careful not to put middle school students in situations where they will be embarrassed, but find ways to stretch your high school students.

Tom suggests a three step strategy for making this transition effectively:

1.    Make a transition with your purpose.

As you move through the transition with your students from middle school to high school, I believe your purpose changes. Think about it: your students are moving from a concrete, dependent world of an eleven-year-old to the abstract thinking, totally independent world of an eighteen-year-old. During these years, most of the determinative decisions that will govern their lives’ direction will be made. It is crucial for them to develop a passionate walk with God.

2.    Prepare for the transition with your program.

Everything you do in any student ministry should have focus and purpose, but the need to be intentional is amplified in times of transition. Make a transition in your activities, in your meeting schedule and in your personal approach to students. Allow the transition time to be a marker in the mind of your students of the time they moved from one season of life to another.

3.    Prepare for the transition with the parents.

As you discuss middle school characteristics with parents of middles school students, remember to discuss that adolescence is a time of transition toward independence. Attempts at independence are not a rejection of the parents but most often an attempt to find the boundaries and their freedom. Work with parents to learn which issues may be ignored as growing-pains and which ought to be addressed. Remember, middle school students are searching for a role model.

High School to College

Everybody celebrates high school graduation. It is a life transition always filled with formality. It’s where we came up with the term “pomp and circumstance.” In a given youth group, you likely have multiple graduating seniors, which likely means multiple graduation party invites. Josh Griffin has some good advice about graduation season: Tips to Navigate Graduation Season. If you are giving gifts to each of your high school graduates, I would recommend Interlinc’s Graduation CD: http://www.grad2010.com/, plus, Word of Life’s devotional package http://www.wolstore.org/p-1162-the-graduation-special.aspx.

This is the big one. Everybody talks about the transition from high school to college, but few know how to make this an intentional transition. There is a great ministry called the Youth Transition Network whose mission is to help students ease into their new surroundings and get connected to a church and campus ministry when they go to college. Have a look: http://www.youthtransitionnetwork.org/.