On the first day of ninth-grade orientation, I took my first tentative steps into the Forum, my head circling with worries. Despite my nervous energy, I was excited to start my high school journey. However, as the week of orientation went on, my excitement turned into boredom. The constant lectures and repetitive activities made the days drag on.
Although ninth-grade orientation is necessary to prepare the incoming ninth-graders—whether they are new to GDS or coming from the lower/middle school—orientation was too long. Orientation started with three days dedicated to new students and was followed by four days with the whole grade. Each day of orientation began at 8:45 a.m. and ended at 3:15 p.m. Eight hours of lectures, team-building exercises and mock classes over the span of seven days became tiresome and unnecessary.
The first day of orientation was exciting, and it included team building exercises, introductions to new people and activities throughout the building. The second day, however, was a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) day, a day devoted to learning about how you, as a student, can take action to make a better learning environment. DEI day crawled by; we listened to three lectures about what DEI is. These lectures highlighted how to make sure each class was equal and inclusive and what diversity looks like in a school environment. Although it is necessary to learn about DEI, three lectures was too much. The third day of orientation went by just as slowly. It wasn’t until the fourth day, when all of the students who went to the lower/middle school came, that the exciting atmosphere returned to orientation.
When the second week of orientation came, the days relapsed into the same boring activities, and the eight-hour days began to feel longer.
“I think looking at the length of the program is probably a good idea,” Director of Student Community Programming Bobby Asher said in an interview with the Bit. “I started when there was no orientation, and ninth-graders would start and not know where their classes were,” Asher said. “They would be completely overwhelmed by the school and the school culture.” Orientation did help me navigate the building and high school culture.
Orientation also failed to teach us the structure of the courses ninth-graders would be taking. “[Orientation] didn’t really tell me about any of the classes I was taking,” sophomore Evy Gilroy said. I was surprised to see my classes structured like a seminar, since I came from a middle school that had a traditional style of classes where the teacher would teach us the content through a slideshow and lectures. We would rarely have open discussions in class. I wish orientation had shown me what a seminar-style class looked like and how to participate in one, so I would’ve been better prepared.
Orientation also didn’t have enough team-building exercises. We did three team-building activities, two of which were scavenger hunts around the campus, but I wish there had been more team-building exercises when the students from the middle school came, because now, starting the school year, there is still a social divide between the new students and students who went to the middle school. It was difficult to make friends from the lower middle school when we were relying on poorly executed icebreaker activities to break the awkward tension.
To make orientation more exciting and effective for future GDS students, there are a few things administrators can do.
The program should be shorter. Orientation should be the same number of days, but each day should be a half-day. The afternoons of orientation felt extra long, as everybody lacked energy and there were many sporadic activities like “field time” and lectures that made it clear the organizers were just trying to fill time. Making the days of orientation half-days can provide a more fun and effective experience for the students.
As for the content of the program, many of the lectures had the same message and could’ve been consolidated into one lecture instead of three or four. Eight hours devoted to DEI was excessive, and DEI day should’ve been cut in half. Hearing from students that took the ninth-grade classes I was going to take would’ve helped me better understand what to expect from teachers and their classes.
An orientation with these changes would make for a program that gets the students prepared for school, engaged and less nervous about their first year.