Back for Another Year, Amity's "Link Crew" Helps Freshmen Get Their Bearings

It's been nine years since Amity introduced Link Crew, the program that links upper-classmen to freshmen to serve as guides and mentors. Link Crew returns today -- or at least, it's the day a group of seniors and juniors will start all-day training to be ready for Friday's official Freshman Orientation. These are selfless mentors -- they're giving up their last two days of summer vacation to take on the task. 

English teacher and Link Crew coordinator Tasia Kimball says she's seen enough successes in less than a decade to last a lifetime.

"One of our great kids, a senior, really well known and popular, had gotten to be friends with a freshman [through Link Crew]," she say. "Come senior prom, he called the father of the freshman girl and said, i'd love her to come -- as friends. That was something it's hard to imagine: a senior boy wanting to hang around with freshmen. And to me that spoke volumes."

Link Crew is run by the Boomerang Project, a California-based company founded "to make schools great, safe and connected places for kids to learn," according to its website.

Kimball says the benefits of linking students to students as mentors are obvious.

"Adults, we can tell them 'til we're blue in the face," Kimball says. "But as I'll say to my link leaders tomorrow [Wednesday, the first day of training], if you're an upper classman they think you're cool."

Training for Link Leaders begins at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday at Amity High School Media Center and continues at the same time Thursday. Link Crew freshman orientation begins at 8:00 a.m. Friday for all freshman and Link Leaders, wrapping up with a cookout at 12:30 p.m.