Last year as I was being introduced to a group of eighth graders at a middle school, the 8th grade teacher paid Connections a wonderful compliment. She said, “In all the years that I’ve had my eighth graders come back and talk to me about high school, I’ve never had one say they didn’t enjoy Connections.

Connections is ten days long. We start at 8:00 and end at 3:15. In ten days students go from concerned eighth graders to more knowledgeable freshmen who can better manage themselves and lead others through the first month of high school. They are still nervous, but knowledge and experience are good ballast for the open waters of high school.

This is the most intense and the most difficult event of the team challenges. We wanted to do two things: 1.) We wanted to amp up the difficulty and really put pressure on students to deal with each other. 2.) We wanted students to have a common experience.

We created this to help establish a team type atmosphere amongst our groups.  It is done on 2 different days in our afternoon sessions. One day fairly early on in the session (Day 3 or so).  The second day around day 6 or 7.  This helps set the tone for our Team Competition for the session.