Denton ISD Our Impact In Your Community Magazine October 2016 | Page 22

Transitions

Successful WEB program uses student leaders to help ease
adjustment to middle school and create sense of community

T

Excited to meet new people and take part
in the extra opportunities middle school
provides, Cameron was eager to start sixth
grade. But coming from an elementary
school outside the Harpool Middle School
attendance zone, he was also pretty sure
none of his old friends would be there on the
first day of school.

Harpool’s WEB (Where Everybody Belongs)
program has been helping students like
Cameron ease into middle school life for nine
years now. Since the school opened in 2008,
it has offered the transition program to its
incoming sixth-graders in an effort to not
just take their minds off of the switch to a
new building and no more recess, but to also
help them relate to their older peers.
While every middle school in Denton ISD
offers a transition program or orientation
to first-time sixth graders, WEB is unique in
that the program is primarily led by current
students. Started at Strickland Middle
School by former principal Mike Vance, WEB
was brought to Harpool by Mr. Vance as a
transition piece to get students involved in
the opening of the school.

“Without WEB, I’m pretty sure I would’ve
been unprepared for Day 1 of sixth grade,”
Cameron said. “Now I know eighth graders
and I know they’re going to talk to me and
help me if I have questions. That made me
more confident walking into school.”

Jeff Smith, an assistant principal under Mr.
Vance and Harpool’s current principal, said
students jumped at the opportunity to
take part in helping others not just see the
excitement of opening a new school but
also transition to middle school. It is one of

he transition from fifth grade to sixth
grade can be stressful for even the most
self-assured student, much less those
wondering what horrors lurk around the
corner of the hallways in middle school.
Cameron Mulvanny’s fears fit somewhere in
the middle.

Story
and Photos by
Mario Zavala Jr.

22