By Deirdre Marlowe, Executive Director
This continues to be a year of New Beginnings for Peninsula Bridge. After a five day, nearly three thousand mile drive, I arrived in Palo Alto from Baltimore, MD, to serve Bridge as its fifth Executive Director. I arrived while our program was in session, which gave me the opportunity to visit sites, and catch some of each one's closing celebration. To paraphrase Roman philosopher Seneca, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I believe that participation in our summer program gives our middle school students a good beginning to their next school year. Now I am beginning to get to know members of the Bridge community.
This year, too, Bridge saw the implementation of several new program initiatives which Chloe Kamprath, Program Director, came out of retirement to complete for us. Chloe developed a Family Resource Manual and companion-training piece. She also orchestrated the development of online pre- and post-tests aligned with CA State Standards in the areas of mathematics and language arts. Finally, she supervised the development and implementation of a programwide Teacher Assistant training program. I'd like to thank Chloe for her work with Bridge, and the support she provided in my first days, all of which will prove more than helpful as Bridge prepares for its next two New Beginnings.
Our new academic partners, Saint Francis High School, Mountain View, and Pinewood School, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, will begin hosting the Bridge summer program in June 2012. The new Site Directors are already working with their feeder schools and colleagues at other sites in order to get things off to a good start for our students.
One of the things that called me to Bridge was its guiding principle that "As active members of our community, we are responsible for enhancing and improving the education of young people. We are accountable for the quality of our programs and the outcomes of our work." In the meetings I've enjoyed thus far with members of the Bridge community, the excitement that this commitment breeds has been clear from the physical math warm-ups at St. Matt's to the proud mother of her third Bridge graduate at Priory - and all sites and encounters between. I look forward to serving Bridge as I continue my new beginning.