The Summerbridge Community

Moravian Academy

Moravian Academy, like Moravian University, is part of the larger Moravian faith and its championing of education for all.

As an Independent School, MA functions differently than public schools in many ways, including it is leadership structure, its goals, and its funding.

Summerbridge began at Moravian Academy in 1993 after a previous headmaster, Peter Sipple, returned from a conference for the national Summerbridge program. Sipple was invested in helping not only the students fortunate enough to afford Moravian Academy, but also students in the community with more difficult financial lives.

Lehigh Valley Summerbridge became its own entity when the national program began to dictate curriculum and charge dues. We felt that we knew what our students and community needed so we retained our name and independence.

LV Summerbridge has flourished over the years. We have worked to help many hundreds of students and aspiring teachers to learn, grow, and find their path. As we look toward the future, we hope to continue expanding by lengthening our new 9th grad program and by adding programming through high school.

At Summerbridge, we take the idea of community seriously. We emphasize the importance of our Summerbridge community and of the students' choice to to be a part of it.

We want our students to know they are part of a special community that values their intelligence, their perseverance, their voices, and their stories. We want students to explore their love of learning and their curiosity with a group of peers and teachers who love it too.

At Summerbridge, we emphasize self-sufficiency; knowing when and how to ask for help; respect for each other, the space around us, and our community; accountability; creativity; and empathy. We want students to continue to make positive choices for themselves and to be able to navigate the day to day challenges of their lives.

We also want our students to know that it is not shameful to need help. We all need help in a variety of ways. Asking for help when it is needed is an important skill that our students need to take seriously.

Our mission has a dual focus:

Students: we want to provide opportunities for hard working, low income, students in our community and help them to better understand the process of attaining a higher education. Our students know that education is the way to better their lives and their circumstances. They come to us to be enriched and engaged. We also want to provide our students with the language of college and opportunities to tour college campuses. We want students to see that college is a possibility no matter their circumstances.

Teachers: we want to provide opportunities for college aged aspiring teachers to have a more in depth experience with lesson planning, classroom management, and teaching. We provide teachers with their very first classroom where they make the rules and dictate the content. We want our teachers to learn not only how to plan and enact plans, but how to challenge themselves creatively, handle the pressures of teaching, search and apply for the right job for them, and work toward becoming the best version of themselves.

Although we used to have a Board of Directors, it was jettisoned under a previous headmaster.

In the fall of 2017, the board was reinstated. Members of the board include past Summerbridge teachers, past Moravian Academy board members, Moravian Academy staff, and Moravian Academy parents.

This group has been instrumental in devising new ways to increase fundraising and in creating the 9th grade program.