By Kai-Lou Yue
Business Manager

With the heavy workload and fast paced classes at WA, missing just one or two days of classes can be difficult to make up. For students who have had extended absences due to vacations or hospitalizations, the amount of school and homework that accumulates can be both stress inducing and academically challenging.

However, WA has joined the ranks of schools that have programs to help hospitalized students who have had prolonged absences from school because of physical or emotional issues such as a concussion or depression. Known as the Bridge Program, this system helps these students with their emotional, academic, and social needs while they are dealing with the stress of returning to school and the amount of missed schoolwork.

This is the first year that the Bridge program has officially been part of WA; in prior years, students received help from counselors and teachers as part of an unofficial program led by the now retired Guidance Director Mark Lucey. At the beginning of this year,  teachers and staff were fully informed of this new system, and according to current head guidance counselor Wendy Pechacek, about nine or ten students have already gone through the program and were integrated back into the school curriculum successfully.

Behind the scenes, a few staff members of the school, such as Pechacek, invest much of their time and effort helping the students and running the program. As one of the main coordinators, she plans weekly meetings for the Bridge staff to discuss and share information, works out the logistics of the system, and informs the other guidance counselors and faculty members on what is happening.

In addition to Pechacek, Tracey Murphy, Clinical Coordinator of the program, Steve Cunha, school psychologist, and Neil Yeung, WA Mandarin teacher and Academic Tutor of the Bridge, play large parts in ensuring the program is a success.

For a WA high schooler to take part in the Bridge program after an absence, his or her guidance counselor must first deem the program to be a good fit.

“When a guidance counselor has a student who’s been out of school for a while, usually for a hospitalization or a concussion … they will talk to [the staff] in the program to decide whether that would be a good support for the student when they’re ready to come back to school, and then if they decide that they’re going to use the Bridge program, then Mr. Yeung would email all of the student’s teachers,” said Pechacek.

Yeung, as the Academic Tutor, handles integrating the students back into the academic curriculum. He contacts and works with the students’ teachers to find out what the students missed during their absence, and what is vital. Additionally, he helps to proctor missed tests and occasionally tutors students in the Bridge who are having trouble with a particular subject.

“Say you’re in an accident, or you get hit in the head with a football, and you are out for three weeks. In those three weeks, what did you miss that is vitally important for you to complete in order to continue with class? Not the busy work, not the little homeworks, not the quizzes, but the hard hitting stuff like what essay did you miss, which tests did you miss?” said Yeung.

The students, the teachers of the students, and Yeung make a schedule for the tasks that need to be submitted and their due dates. The students, in accordance to the plan, work on the assignments during their designated Bridge periods in the Bridge room located in the library, until they finish. Depending on the amount of work, some students are with Yeung one period a day, while others are in Bridge the entire day.

Murphy and Cunha, on the other hand, are more focused on the emotional side of the program. Cunha, who has worked in a hospital in the past, has prior knowledge of the way hospitals are run and the way students may feel while transitioning from the hospital back to school; Murphy, on the other hand, has a social worker background with some counseling experience. Their main role in the Bridge is to be available for students if they need to talk to someone while at school.

“When you go to a hospital, you use a certain type of language; you have a different mindset … I can understand that a little bit. But I’m also there for the kids to talk to … about once a week, just to check in, see how they’re doing … [I’m] trying to provide as much emotional support as I can,” said Cunha.

He added, “Every student coming back from the hospital is going to have different needs … The hospital is a hard place to be, for whatever reason. It’s not easy. So, having people come back from [there], we want to be able to provide them with adequate support while they are [at school]. We’re trying to promote the healthy lifestyle that they got from the hospital.”

Along with these four main WA staff members, other people, such as Principal James Antonelli, and Gene Troisi, a substitute teacher, have lent their support to this program. Antonelli has assisted in presenting the program to the school committee for budget reasons and in staffing the Bridge.  Troisi, although not a full time teacher at the school, supports by teaching Science and Math to Bridge students struggling in those subjects.

Overall, the main staff of the program believe that the program has been successful and helpful to all people participating.

“I definitely think the [program] has been successful with the students who have used it; it’s been a really good option. I think it helps the teachers, because they know whom to go to, and they know that there are multiple people working with that student … It’s helpful certainly for the students and their parents to know that we have this team to getting them back into the system, and it’s helpful for the students’ stress levels … they can decide by class when they’re ready to go back,” said Pechacek.