Making connections: Link Crew project to help freshmen have a good start
By Kim Grizzard
The Daily Reflector
Monday, August 18, 2008
When freshmen arrive on the campus of
At the start of his freshman year, Grice was tricked into thinking that area was off-limits.
“Somebody told me we couldn't go in the courtyard; it was for upperclassmen,” the senior said, laughing. “I was late to class for like two weeks.”
To keep other students from having the same problem, Grice has volunteered to be among the first members of the school's Link Crew. The program, being used this year in five of
“It's a pretty big step between middle school and high school,” said teacher Amity Kea, who heads the Link Crew program at
Rose was among the first schools in the state to implement Link Crew, a student orientation and transition program that originated on the West Coast. Now used at more than 1,200 schools across the country, Link Crew introduced an estimated 700,000 freshmen to high school in 2006.
Rose junior Gabrielle Mathews was one of them.
“I remember having a lot of fun on that freshmen orientation day,” she said. “I remember meeting a lot of new people, forming relationships with upperclassmen. I left Rose that day feeling more comfortable about transitioning into high school.”
In Link Crew, groups of freshmen are assigned to upperclassmen leaders during orientation. The juniors and seniors not only lead new students on tours of the school, they help them understand how to navigate in other ways as well.
“These kids have set themselves up to be a primary contact — a big brother or big sister, if you will — for these freshmen,” said teacher Coleman Bailey, who is heading the Link Crew program at D.H. Conley.
Link Crew leaders, who can be identified by the bright green T-shirts they'll be wearing the first day of school (an exemption to the new uniform policy), are trained to watch out for their group, along with any other freshmen who appear to be lost or confused. They will be available to give directions, advice and even to eat lunch with new students.
“You would not believe the number of freshmen who do not eat lunch the first week of school,” said Chena Cayton, 9-12 instructional and staff development coordinator for Pitt County Schools. Cayton, who helped introduce Link Crew at Rose in 2004, said just going into the cafeteria alone can be intimidating for new students.
Conley junior Juliann Shirley remembers that feeling. She knew only a handful of students when she started at the school.
“I went to a Christian school before I came here, and it was kind of scary (to come),” said Shirley, a Link Crew volunteer. “I was really scared that people were going to be mean.”
Link Crew members not only agree to be friendly to freshmen; they commit to an ongoing relationship with them. Leaders and their groups will meet periodically throughout the year to address challenges the new students are encountering.
“It's all about building relationships,” said teacher Amy Hilliard, who heads the Link Crew program at South Central. “It's not just over after Thursday. It's a yearlong program.”
Conley senior Jordan Rouse, a Link Crew volunteer, sees the program as a good opportunity for students to break down social barriers that might exist between upperclassmen and freshmen.
“When I was a freshman, I didn't have any relationships with seniors or juniors,” she said. “To have that person you can look up to within your same school, that's really cool.”
Having the relationships, Link Crew organizers hope, will cut down on some of the pranks upperclassmen have been known to play on unsuspecting freshmen.
“People don't stuff people in trash cans, shove people in lockers,” Rouse said.
But they have been known to give them directions to the swimming pool (none of the area public schools has one) or tell them to use the elevator (nonexistent at most schools; off-limits to the general population at Conley).
“This year,” Conley senior and Link Crew volunteer Ian Bryan said, “we made forms that say, ‘Jokes Not to Fall For.