What’s Right With Our Schools: Dalewood Middle and Bridge Chattanooga

CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – Bridge Chattanooga works to help students develop the skills they need to lead happy, healthy and productive lives. One of the ways they do that is through an afternoon program where kids from Dalewood Middle spend some quality time at nearby First Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Rashaad Williams is the Principal at Dalewood Middle School.

He says, “They do it consistently. Bridge is here when they say they are going to be here, Tuesday through Thursday of every week. They come to the school. They take them to the church that sits directly behind our school; pick the kids up. They don’t just come, meet with the students after school at the church behind us, but they seek to help and develop the whole family.

Morgan Williams is a Social Worker for Bridge of Chattanooga.

She explains, “The church First Cumberland Presbyterian is our umbrella for Bridge. Geographically, it worked out that the church and the school being right beside each other. The big thing that we are focusing on is social and emotional learning skills. So, for example when we do circles before, we want to check in with how they are feeling, but we also want to give them broader vocabulary; give them the space and the time and the skills to really gain that self-awareness to understand what they are feeling and understand how to share that.

Pierre Welch is a 6th Grader at Dalewood.

He chips in, “We get to learn verbals, I mean vocabularies. And they teach us like, how to keep ourselves under control when we are mad.”

Morgan adds, “Other things that we like to work on like relationship building skills, anger management, conflict resolution just a lot of stuff.  You can learn these things in the outdoors but taking the time to be intentional about it, having big conversations about it, hopefully, really helps them sink in.”

Kahla Stewart is the Outdoors Specialist for Bridge Chattanooga.

She says, “The kids referred to me as mom, because it’s like as soon as they come in, my main thing is like respect. We do respect. We are respectful to one another. I am big on rules. I am big on like not talking while others are talking. So, we can all get the day started, but all in all I like to have fun. So, we all enjoy each other, but at the same time, we want to respect each other while we are having fun.

Morgan concludes, “They are learning at such a young age to work with people who are different than them, who have different interests than them, who have different opinions than them, and that is something that as an adult I still try to learn. So, I think that is something really cool that Bridge has to offer as well.”