Parent Resources
Parents of middle schoolers shouldn't have to navigate these years alone.
Helping parents help their students...
Throughout middle school, the gap between parents and students may appear to get wider and wider. However, we know that parents remain the most important people in students’ lives. We believe that each student in Transit needs three key experiences with a parent or parents during their middle school years. We call these experiences “Mile Markers.”
Video Resources
Mile Marker Six
To help ease the tension of the journey into 6th grade, we’ve provided questions and discussion guides for you and your students to work through on the topic of faith. Middle school is the time students begin choosing to make their faith their own. As parents, you are the most influential people in their lives. So, these discussions will center on your faith journeys and will equip your students with a vocabulary to express their own doubts and questions.
Mile Marker Seven
During the fall of a student’s 7th-grade year, we will start promoting our summer service trips. Middle school students are hyper-aware of their surroundings and culture. While this natural focus helps them develop their definition of the adults they are becoming, it causes many people to accuse them of being “selfish” or “living in a bubble.” Therefore, we encourage parents to take their middle schoolers on a different type of adventure after they finish 7th grade: a service trip. It is eye-opening for students to see people living in different cultural contexts, dealing with different sets of challenges. It’s also powerful for them to see one of their parents serving others. By modeling how to put others first, parents naturally open up conversations about priorities and values.
Transit service trip sign-ups start in November, and teams will be finalized in January. Each service trip team has at least three meetings in the spring before their summer adventure begins.
Mile Marker Eight
Cultures around the world have recognized the importance of rite of passage experiences. They provide students with distinctive markers to point to as the moments they started on the road to adulthood. Here you will find some materials to help you construct a rite of passage experience in the form of a formal blessing as your student's time in middle school comes to a close.
Additional Resources
Your students will have to deal with the good and the bad that technology offers. It’s a different world than we grew up in and one that we’re still learning to navigate as adults. Andy Stanley sat down and gave us advice on how best to prepare our students for the challenges that come along with technology and smartphones.
