The training was held Sept. 24-27 at the Holiday Inn Riverwalk in San Antonio.

S2S is a unique, student-led, school-managed youth sponsorship program that confronts the challenges of school transition and provides training that gives new students the best possible transition experience.

Since the hiring of school liaison officers worldwide in fiscal year 2009, the Navy has a conduit through which to advertise and offer this and other training to school students throughout Navy.

MCEC was the chosen vendor for this program, and funding was provided entirely by the Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC).

Eight schools were chosen worldwide across military services to attend this training.

The four selected Navy schools, all from Naval District Washington (NDW), were Great Mills High School of Lexington Park, St. Mary’s Ryken High School of Lexington Park, Westlake High School of Waldorf, and Northpoint High School of Waldorf.

Also in attendance were the school liaison officers from the Navy Child and Youth Program from Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, Brooke Fallon, and from Naval Support Activity (NSA) South Potomac, Ladonna Abdullah.

The participants were trained in three transition areas of concern: academics, relationships, and finding the way (campus, community, and culture).

Through lectures, interactive activities, and student-created presentations, the participants studied a variety of needs and issues to address for new students at each school.

Before the conference closed, the participants developed and presented their local action plan for implementing their school’s S2S program, including how to recruit and train S2S sponsors and how to find new students who are both military- and nonmilitary-connected.

On the same course as the S2S training, MCEC offers another important resource to military-connected families, called SchoolQuest.

SchoolQuest is a secure, free, online resource that allows parents and students to match their needs with the new schools they might be attending.

It eases the search for programs which meet a student’s specific needs and can even match students with schools that have an existing S2S program.

For questions about this training or local child and youth education programming, check out SchoolQuest at www.schoolquest.org; contact your local Installation School Liaison Officer, or the Regional School Liaison Officer, Jennifer Dailey-Perkins at (202) 433-0942 or email at Jennifer.daileyperki@navy.mil.