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In this qualitative case study (n = 32), researchers sought to understand the ways a multi-day summer transition camp may help incoming ninth-grade students experience a developmentally responsive transition into high school. The findings revealed camp helped support students’ procedural, social, and academic-related needs and concerns. Learning the school layout and policies helped support students’ procedural-related needs and concerns. Promoting student–student, educator–student, and school–student relationships helped support students’ social-related needs and concerns. Attending academic classes and communicating expectations for academic success helped support students’ academic-related needs and concerns. A summer camp may foster a responsive transition and mitigate school failure, but must be developed and delivered based on students’ developmental and transition-related needs and concerns. Furthermore, students must perceive camp activities as actually supporting their needs and concerns.

This autoethnographic work explores my experience with illness (specifically anti-N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor encephalitis), recovery, and career change all in the span of a few months. Through reflexive interviews and a first-person narrative, I analyzed the shifting nature of my identity, specifically my teacher identity as I moved from struggling teacher, to patient, and back to teacher again. I also analyzed how the act of writing, and writing the narrative of this autoethnography, assisted in the healing process. My story shows that in moving from pre-illness to post-illness, I shifted from a strict, content-based teacher to a constructivist facilitator with a focus on critical thinking.

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