Link Crew is a new Leadership class that will replace Aragon’s Big Buddies program in the 2019-2020 school year. It is a program in place at schools nationwide aiming to help transition freshmen into high school through guidance from sophomores, juniors and seniors.
“[Link Crew] is intended to be a year long program that’s going to plan events ‘linking’ the freshmen with the upperclassmen and become more involved in the Aragon community,” said Link Crew teacher Courtney Caldwell.
Caldwell, who currently teaches history and serves as senior class adviser, will teach this class along with Leadership teacher Melissa Perino, who will also work to implement the new and improved buddy system.
“Big Buddies has been planning events like the Ice Cream Social and the Social Media Campaign for big buddies to take pictures with their little buddies,” Caldwell said. “Link Crew is not only going to do things like that, but do them consistently.”
Link Crew intends to address the lack of consistent interactions between big buddies and freshmen.
“[Link Crew] is a good idea,” said freshman Mina Mittler. “Not from my experience, but I’ve heard from other freshmen that their big buddies didn’t show up for certain events like the Ice Cream social, so they were disappointed.”
Link Crew leaders will interact with their little buddies at least twice a month.
“There will be two kinds of follow-ups that will be done each month in the school year,” Caldwell said. “There will be academic follow-ups that will take place within the school day. There will also be social follow-ups, like the Tailgate BBQ which we have already, but [Link Crew will be doing] these monthly rather than sporadically.”
According to Caldwell, these follow-ups would be planned by the leaders in the Link Crew class.
“There will be the core Link Crew leaders in the class working daily to plan activities or learning how to be strong mentors in our campus community,” Caldwell said. “I would say the number is 30-35 in the Link Crew Leadership class, but we need [roughly] 110 Link Crew [members].”
Therefore, Link Crew members do not need to take this class to be a part of Link Crew.
“The Link Crew class is for those who want to be involved in all the behind the scenes work: planning the events and carrying out those trainings,” Caldwell said. “They’ll be in charge of training our Link Crew leaders throughout the year.”
Current junior big buddy Brianna Huang has a positive outlook on Link Crew.
“If you want to be a big buddy in the first place, you should be willing to support your little buddies, and [Link Crew] should ensure that the need is met for them,” Huang said.
“If you want to be a big buddy in the first place, you should be willing to support your little buddies”
The Link Crew class will be taught differently than academic classes, emphasizing learning through experience.
“A lot of the class will be learning how to mentor the freshmen,” Caldwell said. “Instead of me as a teacher lecturing, it’s actually more of an experience of ‘let’s do this’ and ‘how to effectively mentor.’”
The new class will be structured similarly to the Renaissance and Leadership classes, with different commissions. Link Crew plans to have an executive commission, academic/social follow-up commission and publicity commission.
“I’ve seen [Link Crew]’s effectiveness [at other schools]. Students coming into high school sometimes don’t feel a sense of connection,” said special education teacher Steve Labrum. “They will feel a better sense of connection with the check-ins and a Link Crew buddy.”
The application will also be similar to the Big Buddies applications, according to Caldwell.
“We still want to know what campus or community groups students are involved in because we want our Link Crew members to reflect our diverse community, not just leadership qualities,” Caldwell said.
The process would help find Aragon students willing to put in the effort to connect with freshmen.
“If the right people choose that [Link Crew] class, the effect of Big Buddies will improve greatly,” said freshman Victoria Lafrance. “If people are signing up for the class to have a class they can slack off in, it won’t be as efficient.”
“If the right people choose that [Link Crew] class, the effect of Big Buddies will improve greatly”
Having good relationships between upperclassmen and freshmen has been emphasized by the Big Buddy program to build a close Aragon community, but the consistency of Link Crew would ensure more interactions between big and little buddies that was sometimes missing in the Big Buddies program.
“The idea of the class is really good because you’re strongly encouraged to interact with your little buddies more,” Huang said. “What Big Buddies is like now — we talk to our little buddies for about a week and end up never talking to them ever again.”
This new addition of Link Crew will strive to create a welcoming and supportive experience for all incoming freshmen.
“Link Crew, the organization, has been around for 30 plus years,” Caldwell said. “We’re building a Link Crew to last as a staple of our Aragon community.”
