IRVINE : ‘How-to’ Class Aids Future 7th-Graders

Lesley Sebek, 12, found it hard last school year to drag herself out of bed in time for class at Springbrook Elementary School.

This summer, though, Sebek has awakened in plenty of time to get to her 7:45 a.m. summer school class at Rancho San Joaquin Intermediate School.

Her explanation: This three-week session for the fall’s incoming students at Rancho San Joaquin and South Lake middle schools isn’t just some boring summer school class.

It’s equal parts old-fashioned academic enhancement and newfangled “how-to” guide for surviving the seventh grade.

It’s the survival material--how to be brave enough to tell other kids you don’t want to tag buildings, join gangs or do drugs--that has made Sebek and the hundred other participants feel ready to make the jump to middle school.

“I’m not really nervous,” Sebek said Thursday, after giving her final humanities presentation on how restaurant owners and residents feel about smoking bans in public places. “We saw pictures of South Lake, met the principal, and I’ve met new friends who will be in school with me. It was worth it.”

Counselor Lynn Kaminsky, who has been with the Rancho San Joaquin’s “Transitions Institute” summer school program since it began four years ago, said children moving from elementary to middle school need to know what to expect in terms of school layout, class rules, peer pressure and homework deadlines.

“You can tell who these kids are in September,” she said. “They’re like little ambassadors running around the school.”

Middle school can be stressful for young children fresh off the more structured and friendly elementary school campus, said Kathy McKeown, who teaches the summer school’s humanities classes.

In middle school they face “more independence and responsibility,” McKeown said. “And it’s a time of great emotional and physical changes. It all wears on them.”