Carmel Middle School

Building a Connection (BAC)

Building a Connection is a 6^th grade mentor program at CMS.  Every 6^th grader is given a mentor from our Leadership class.  That mentor’s job is to make sure that the 6^th grader feels welcomed to CMS and has someone they can go to for questions.  Our BAC program kicks the school year off with a two hour Welcome program the day before school starts.  At the Welcome 6^th graders participate in a number of interactive activities designed to help them get to know 6^th graders from the other two elementary schools in CUSD.  After the activities, the 6^th graders get to know their mentors during a Q&A session and then the 6^th graders are taken on a tour of the campus and shown where their classes are.  Once the school year starts, the BAC mentors check in with their 6^th graders to see how things are going, write encouraging notes to them, and call them at home to invite them to different school functions.  At the end of the first trimester, all of the 6^th graders and the BAC mentors gather one last time at an ice cream social.  Through this program we have found that 6^th graders feel much more comfortable with the transition to middle school and have a lot less anxiety when they show up the first day of school.