This year, all juniors were assigned lockers on the ground floor, and all locker assignments for freshmen moved up to the second floor.
“Freshmen are kind of naive, small and scared,” sophomore Joshua Kemp said. Kemp felt that the reason for the new arrangements was the large increase in the freshmen population this year.
“A group of teachers and administrators went to Kilmer Middle School last year to observe [the middle schoolers’] experience of lunch there and their experience of middle school compared to high school to make sure that when they come here, they don’t get lost in the shuffle,” visual arts teacher Nicole Walter said.
Director of student services Cindy Blakeley, explained that the plans to move freshmen to the second floor were hatched last spring.
“We saw [that middle-schoolers] had a highly, highly structured lunch,” Walter said. “They had assigned tables, and when they come here, lunch is just a huge free-for-all.”
What the team also noticed was that the eighth graders’ lockers were close to their classes, Blakeley said.
Assistant principal Jeff Litz said that “it made more sense to put the freshmen where most of their classes [were].”
“I like it,” freshman John Hoffman said, “it’s really close to three of my classes upstairs.”
Freshman Robin Firth expressed similar sentiments about his locker location, mentioning that he liked it because of how close it was to all of his classes.
Along with the new locker arrangements, a new 28-day preparation plan was implemented for the freshmen this year as well.
On their first day of school the ninth graders had all their seven-day classes. After that, they had six days to acquaint themselves with the counselors, clubs and the administration.
The freshmen squads, which began meeting in 2008, were also part of the Freshmen Transition Program this year.
The squads were created to help the freshmen year-round by giving ninth graders better access to upperclassmen and teachers for advice on adapting to high school.
Firth said that they were not very helpful “because everyone just [ate] their lunch,” but freshman Jodie Ryu felt otherwise and said that they gave good advice.