In the fall of 2024, Grandview will begin to work towards reaching a new goal: better introducing incoming freshmen to a high school environment. To accomplish this, a new class, One Pack 101, will be required for each incoming freshman to attend.  

This reinvention of Freshman Seminar, which left during the COVID-19 period, will be taught by volunteer faculty at Grandview and they’re “really excited about it,” assistant principal Anne Koch said.  

That’s great, but I think they’re the only ones that are excited.

Why do freshmen need another necessary transitional class? Our school offers opportunities for freshmen to be oriented into life at high school through Link Crew and Advisory and I haven’t heard many concerns from this year’s class of freshmen about not feeling ready for high school. 

“I don’t want them to feel like it’s an advisory 2.0. It’s gonna be different,” Koch said.

While Koch attempts to comfort the class of 2028, I don’t believe that. After three years of Advisory, I have realized that the purpose is to ultimately give students a trusted adult, create a smaller community, and relay information easily. The class does that well and, while there’s a lot of criticism, it has been successful at its purpose. 

The goals I predict for One Pack 101? To give freshmen a smaller community to connect with and offer information about how to navigate Grandview. While these are just predictions, the class is still in production.

“We have a really great committee of teachers and counselors right now trying to really figure out what One Pack 101 will look like and how it will most benefit our freshmen,” Koch said.  

Rolling out a new class for students who have never been in high school before should be extremely well thought out to make sure first impressions of Grandview and the experience are positive. If my first experience was a volunteer teacher trying their best to scrap together an incomplete idea of a class, like what often happens in Advisory, I would not be excited for high school. No matter what message is trying to be conveyed, it will be lost because of this committee’s effort to rush a class together. 

Advisory has already set the precedent of better connecting students to the Grandview community and it can, and should, be adapted to fit each grade. Freshman advisory can cover everything incoming freshmen are concerned about in a time that has already been allotted. Evolving Advisory into a more productive environment will help the freshmen just as much as another class would. The goals of One Pack 101 and Freshman Advisory are too similar to take up the valuable time of our administration in creating a new course and the valuable time of our freshmen in adapting to a new environment. 

Additionally, if the administration wants to continue to make a new class, they should take more time to make sure this addition is efficient and needed. Reaching out to current freshmen to learn what they felt was missing from their first year or what they wish they knew earlier would improve this idea significantly and pinpoint their goals. 

“We just want to continue to support our freshmen as they transition into high school,” Koch said.  

A great sentiment from Grandview’s administration, but the execution needs to exceed expectations for the class to be worth it.