Link Crew is not beneficial for entire year

It’s Monday tutorial and freshmen sluggishly walk into classrooms for Freshman Focus, a monthly meeting with teachers and Link Crew leaders that is mandatory for them. They are sadly aware that their entire tutorial will be spent answering questions from Link leaders such as, “How was your week?” and “How’s freshman year?” 

Instead of using tutorial to do more beneficial activities, they are stuck in an awkward conversation with their Link leaders.

Link Crew tries to help freshmen be happy and successful in high school. Link leaders, who are upperclassmen, meet with their freshmen for the first time at Freshman Orientation before school starts and give them advice about high school. 

In past years, freshmen met twice with their Link group during tutorial in the first month of school to discuss high school life. This year, however, freshmen and their Link leaders must complete those two meetings in addition to a meeting once a month for the entire school year. At these monthly meetings, freshmen must bring a printed copy of their grades to show the teacher adviser in their Freshman Focus room.

“I don’t think [Freshman Focus] is beneficial,” said freshman Aaron Vogel. “I think freshmen have already been at the school long enough to know where to go and what to do.”

There is no reason Freshman Focus must last the entire year. Link Crew is pointless after Orientation and a two Freshman Focus meetings. Neither Link leaders nor freshmen enjoy these monthly meetings.

Freshmen would rather spend their tutorials doing more productive activities, such as working on homework or getting extra help from teachers.  This is more useful to their studies than having a teacher who they may or may not have class with review their grades once a month.

“Freshman orientation was helpful, but now I can go on my own,” said Vogel.

The point of Link Crew is to help freshmen transition into high school. The truth is: Most freshmen have transitioned just fine by the end of the first month. Freshmen are already accustomed to their classes, are participating in extracurricular activities and have fully shifted into the high school life. 

Also, if Link Crew hasn’t adjusted freshmen within the first couple weeks of school, evidently, it hasn’t done its job well. Rather than increasing the number of meetings, efforts should be spent on improving the program itself.

Some may say monthly meetings also help freshmen keep track of their grades. This is an invalid point as it is every student’s responsibility to manage and keep track of their own grades, not a teacher’s. Freshmen must learn to take this responsibility of checking grades regularly. If they just rely on these monthly meetings, they will be unprepared for the coming years of high school.

Adding to this issue, many freshmen don’t even bring a printed copy of their grades to Freshman Focus. Without these printouts for the teacher to look at, then the meeting is even more a waste of time.

A suggestion for next year: Go back to the old system for Link Crew and Freshman Focus.