For a few often-rowdy hours on the first morning of the new school year Wednesday, Chief Sealth International High School‘s Class of 2018 had the school to themselves.

Well – except for the upperclassmen volunteers and staffers leading them through those hours via the nationally renowned transition/mentoring program Link Crew.

This is Sealth’s third year with the mentoring program (we reported on student leaders’ preparation the first year, in 2012) meant to get freshmen off to a successful start. It mixes inspiration with goofy icebreakers – like this relay involving hugs and balloons:

On the inspirational side, Luke Azinger told the new arrivals that there are three types of people – those who make things happen, those who watch things happen (both of whom, he stressed, were important in their own ways) and – those who wonder, “What happened?”

In this case, what happened is … they all woke up one day and found themselves in high school. (It was a later wakeup, with Sealth’s bell time later this year, 8:40 am.) But this is one way to start off in a team mode, instead of wandering the halls feeling alone.

Link Crew goes beyond the first-day activities; on Friday, for example, freshmen and their mentors have a barbecue planned and then the first football game of the year (across the street at Southwest Athletic Complex).

P.S. Thanks to student leader Lincoln Vuong for inviting us to visit! He’s pictured below with a faculty Link Crew leader, Kim Dinh:

Lincoln was so organized, he first messaged us two months ago! Other program leaders include assistant principal Andra Maughan as well as Sarah Martin and Carrie Syvertsen, plus Azinger, who emceed the warmup activities happening while we were there at the start of the day. After that, the freshmen were to break up into crews of a dozen or so, with two student leaders for each, finishing the morning with a school tour and wrapup assembly before classes started for the entire school in the afternoon.