By Bruce Karnick

August 31st, 2020, a day freshmen had to look forward too over the summer. The day they make their move into the Hastings Senior High. Kids get nervous, excited, and anxious for this day under normal circumstances, what changes during a pandemic? Monday, half of the class of 2024 entered the high school officially as enrolled students, Tuesday, the other half did the same. They were greeted by older students, their teachers, counselors, other staff, their friends, and their Link Leaders.

Link Leaders are students entering their junior or senior year who applied to the program at the end of the last year. Hastings High School has 4 Link Crew Coordinators. These coordinators work closely with the student leaders helping them guide the younger students. Scott Smallidge, Honors Civics and US History teacher explained the Link Crew, Link Leader program. The Link Crew students normally go through 2 days of intense training. “This year is significantly scaled back because of social distancing.”

See Class of 2024 Page 3

First official time in the HS: Half of the Class of 2024 gathers in the gym to officially kick off their high school careers. Here they heard from various faculty, were assigned to the small tour groups with their Link Leaders and lead to class room to begin their orientation day. Photo by Bruce Karnick

Exploring the Commons: Ninth grade students explore the commons area with their Link Leaders. The Link Leaders point out the library, counselors office, performing arts area, school store and of course where they will get their lunches from. Photo by Bruce Karnick Class of 2024

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Scott Explained, so scaled back, they did only one day of training and even that was limited. Why do students become Link Leaders? There is pride in his voice as he continues, “They either had a really positive experience with their leaders and they want to be that for somebody else.” Most of them do it because they want to make Hastings High School a welcoming place for incoming freshmen,” Scott beamed. What kind of students are part of the Link Crew program? “We are looking for students from all walks of life, you know we want students that are Artsy, students that are Athletes. We want students that like classes in the 1B pod and are more technical. We want freshmen to walk in and see a leader that looks like them.” The Link Crew Coordinators want all kinds of students to be leaders so freshmen see these kids and think “I can be a leader at this school, because look at the diversity we have amongst these leaders,” Scott concluded.

One of the fun aspects of the Link Crew is making welcoming posters to hang around the school.

Sayings like “YOU CAN DO IT!”, “WELCOME THIS MORNING FRESHMEN!”, “WE (HEART) FRESHMEN” were scattered around the school. Think back to your freshmen year, it is intimidating being the smallest, youngest person in the building. Seniors tower over you, they are almost full-grown adults and you may not have hit that growth spurt yet. This program is in place to alleviate some of that fear, one way is the fun and funny signs. The best sign was one that played off “Finding Nemo” and you cannot help but not only giggle at it, but hear it in the right voice. “Freshmen are friends, not food”.

The Link Leaders were paired up, one male and one female and each pair has 10 students they mentor throughout the year. Monday, the Link Leaders were with their freshmen from 7:45 until about 9:30. Group 10, led by Senior Jake Sandquist and Junior Elle Atkins welcomed the Journal to follow along for the morning. After the initial meet and greet in the gym, the leaders brought their group to a classroom where they watched a short video with all the 9th grade teachers introducing themselves to the students. One is noticeably clear from this video; the teachers are extremely excited to be back in school interacting with the kids. After the video, the Link Leaders gave a better introduction to their crew. Senior Jake Sandquist explained the classes he is taking this year and used his sports participation to engage the younger students. “I play baseball and football, do any of you guys play sports?” Sandquist said as he pointed to each student, letting them answer. “If you play sports, I recommend you play as many as you possibly can.” He continued to talk about his life outside of school, his job at Ace Hardware and this seemed to put the ninth graders at ease.

Aside from the mask mandate, this year will be quite different from years past. Each grade is split in to two groups, “Cohort 1” and “Cohort 2”. Each Cohort will go to the school two days a week, Wednesday will be a virtual learning day together and the other two days will be virtual days for the Cohorts not in the building.

For students that are eating hot lunch, they will need to order online each morning through the school portal. This allows the kitchen staff to make and package the food for each student individually. Pick up will be contactless as each class will be brought down to the lunchr o o m by their fifth h o u r teacher. Once the students have their lunch, they will return to their fifth hour class to eat.

Another big change will be traffic flow in the hallways. Stickers on the floor, and signs on the wall direct the flow of traffic one way in the halls. Areas where the walkway is wide enough, students are reminded to stay right and keep physical distancing. Stairsways for the most part are one-way with signs at the entrance points saying what is up and what is down.

The crew was given a tour of the building, shown how the stairs and hallways are going to work this year and brought back to the classroom they started in. There they did some icebreaking games and more introductions to each other and the faculty. The rest of the morning was for them to walk their schedule and meet their teachers, eat lunch, and generally become familiar with their new home for the next four years.

One thing is for certain, the Class of 2024 will have a different story to tell their kids and grandkids. “We couldn’t walk up the stairs both ways, we had to use different stairs, and masks! Don’t get me started on masks! I had to wear one for eight hours straight!” Welcome to Hastings Senior High Class of 2024! We are proud of you, we are here for you, and we want nothing but the best for you. In the immortal words of Rob Schneider, “YOU CAN DO IT!”