What does Gear UP have to offer?

Everyone wants to be in gear up!

Lately, there has been an overwhelming number of students coming to the gear up resource center here at Central High School asking "How do I sign up for gear up?" or "Can I be apart of gear up?". Most of the time, it's great to inform those students who we can accept...seniors and freshmen. In terms of the sophomores and juniors, it breaks my heart to basically tell them that they can receive less than half of the services we offer. I, personally, definitely try to follow up with those students just in the hallways or in the lunchroom and see how they are doing, even if they aren't part of our 2 cohorts.

During gear up week, we put together assemblies in each of the 3 high schools in Bridgeport. A part of the assembly here at Central High School included a video that I put together of past college tours that we have taken our (now seniors) on. We showed this to the class of 2017 (freshmen) so they can really believe what it is that we have to offer. Instead of just talking and talking, we showed them that the very students that they go to school with have been to amazing places like Washington, D.C. and Boston.

Yale-Bridgeport Gear Up Partnership College Tours: 

These are some pictures of the many college tours we have taken our students from the class of 2014 over the years. They are now seniors in either Central High School, Bassick High School, or Harding High School from Bridgeport, Connecticut. We really wanted to get across what Gear Up has to offer and what the students should be taking advantage of. 

Here are some other pictures of the assembly:

 

  




You can see some of seniors speaking to the 9th graders about their experience with gear up. Also, you can see that we showed the senior and freshman "theme" for them to follow throughout high school. The senior theme being "Mission Possible" and the freshman theme being "Transformers". We linked both themes to what gear up measures, offers, and provides in services. Lastly, we showed the 9th graders a video of the motivational speaker, Eric Thomas, and his famous video "Secrets to Success". The students really seemed to love it.

All in all, gear up week was fun and definitely brought more students in which is what our goal was! I hope everyone else has an enjoyable gear up and are continuing to offer your very valuable time and efforts towards changing lives one day at a time! :)


Maysoun Chawiche
Connecticut!