Teachers clapped their hands, stomped their feet and serenaded students as they arrived. They made up songs encouraging the kids to study hard and do their best.

"Learn what you can," they chanted earlier this week. "Do it! Do it! Do it!"

Johnny Crawford/jcrawford@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Students work on a math problem during the Breakthrough Atlanta program at the Lovett School in Atlanta.

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These teachers are college students working in a special summer program designed to encourage middle school students to do well in school and attend college. About 120 kids from across the metro area are in the program.

"When I first saw them singing I thought they were weird,'" said Langston Horne, a rising seventh-grader at Brown Middle in Atlanta. "But I get it now. They're trying to motivate us."

The free program, Breakthrough Atlanta, targets middle school students who have potential, but need encouragement. Over half the students come from low-income homes and most would be the first in their families to attend college, said Monica Rodgers, executive director of the program.

Students join the program as rising seventh-graders and can remain until they graduate from high school.

During middle school, students attend a six-week summer program at the Lovett School in Atlanta. They get lessons in math, English, science and social studies. Electives range from soccer to photography to Spanish. They also take a public speaking class or a college preparatory course covering topics such as what courses and extra-curricular activities they need in high school.

"We try to make students understand learning is cool," Rodgers said.

That means classrooms lessons are anything but ordinary. A history class this week resembled the game show Jeopardy. One team won 400 points in a category called That's So Colonial for correctly answering this question: These were King George's three main reasons for supporting the trusteeship of Georgia. (What is defense, charity and economics.)

"It's not boring here, but that doesn't mean it's easy," said Chelsea Stevenson, a rising eighth-grader at Chapel Hill Middle in DeKalb County. "They made us work to get in here and they make us do homework every night."

Students complete an 11-page application and sit through interviews before being selected for the program.

Breakthrough Atlanta held its first session in 1996 and is financed by grants and donations, Rodgers said. It is part of a national program started in San Francisco in 1978.

Jamal Hill attended the Atlanta program when he was in middle school. The rising sophomore at Brown University returned this summer as one of the teachers.

"I want to give these kids what the program gave me," Hill said. "The people here expected me to succeed. They told me I can achieve my dreams and be anything I want to be. Kids need to be told that a lot."