They started as sixth graders when Naugatuck Valley Community College’s Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Program (GEAR UP) launched in the fall of 2012. This coming academic year, the program’s younger class will enter high school.

“Every single kid in the ninth and tenth grades next year in the four comprehensive high schools (Crosby, Kennedy and Wilby high schools and Waterbury Career Academy) will be considered a GEAR UP child,” said GEAR UP Director Dave Celotto. “We will actually go into schools now and do whole classroom mentoring.” In all, more than 2,300 students are part of the program.

GEAR UP is a seven-year, state-funded initiative providing students with academic and social support, guiding them through high school graduation and beyond. It began when the rising ninth and tenth graders were in sixth and seventh grades respectively and will continue through senior year in high school.

Celotto says results of the program so far have included higher attendance rates, improved success rates in algebra and pre-algebra, better grades, social growth, and more active participation in school activities.

College preparation has always been a focus of GEAR UP, but now that the entire cohort will be in high school, the focus on post-secondary achievement will be ramped up.

“We’ll make a really strong push, instead of just giving them [students and parents] the experience, to really talk about the nitty-gritty of applying for colleges and preparing yourself financially for college acceptance,” said Celotto.

GEAR UP Summer Program
When school isn’t in session, GEAR UP students have the option of attending—free of charge—a summer program at NVCC. This year, approximately 300 students are taking part in the program.

This summer, rising ninth-grade GEAR UP students are part of a program designed to help smooth the transition from middle school to high school. It includes 90 minutes each of math and English/language arts instruction.

“We collaborate with the school district to design a unique curriculum that exposes students to objectives and content that they will see the first marking period of their freshman year,” said Celotto. “We’ve also realized the importance of some of the mentoring topics that we’ve discussed with our students throughout the year, so we’ve built in an hour of leadership curriculum that focuses on a lot of the social-skill building.”

The leadership curriculum is designed to dovetail with the language arts curriculum, covering topics such as reflective and argumentative writing, social skills and college and career readiness.

While the older group of GEAR UP students also receives math and English/language arts instruction, they, in lieu of a transition program, are participating in investigative projects focused on Common Core state standard concepts. For example, the tenth-grade math group is working to create a hypothetical food truck. Students are building, designing and developing a company which will serve food out of a truck—complete with laying out the truck and creating a menu.

Meanwhile, students are using a book club model to study language arts, reading a novel together and using discussions, writing and reflective journals to explore the book’s themes. Incoming tenth graders are also taking project-based, career-tracked courses which include entrepreneurship, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and digital media.

“What I like best about GEAR UP is that it helps you with your career and when you grow up and go to college,” said Irma Flammia, who will be entering tenth grade at Kennedy High School this fall. “You get involved with math, English and you take field trips. That’s what I like.”

Another rising tenth grader at Kennedy High School, Rebekah Merancy, hopes to use what she’s learned through GEAR UP as a launching pad for a career in serology—the scientific study of serum and other bodily fluids. “I like how it readies you for college and it really makes you aware of the different things you can go into—different study habits—all things that really help us.”

This year, Merancy is part of a public-speaking class. “It helps you with English in general. And then we put that skill into a project that we use to present to the board of ed, the town, or just the community as a whole,” she said.  This year, Merancy’s group is working on a plan for an after-school program to educate students about health, fitness and mental health. She says they plan to present the concept to the Waterbury Board of Education and request assistance to implement it.

GEAR UP is administered through NVCC’s Bridge to College Office and is modeled after the Connecticut Collegiate Awareness and Preparation (ConnCAP) program, which has served Waterbury’s first-generation college/ low-income high school students since 1987.