Rider Crew Ready to Help 9th Graders

Roosevelt students get a 3-day crash course to be members of the Rider Crew to help new 9th graders.

A year ago Roosevelt High School Principal Kevin Biggs was a freshman of sorts.

It was his first year at the tradition-rich school and he jumped right in with both feet. In no time he was widely known and highly regarded, by parents and students alike, but he remains sensitive to how difficult the transition can be to a new school, especially for students making the big leap from middle school to high school. So this year he’s assembled a team of upperclassmen to mentor the incoming freshman class. They’re called Rider Crew and Monday morning they began a three-day crash course that will train them to meet and greet the frosh when they report for orientation on Thursday.

Many of them are taking time out from other preseason activities like band camp and football practice to help welcome a new batch of Roughriders into the fold.

Roosevelt’s school colors are blue and white but Rider Crew will be conspicuously bloused in bright, safety orange t-shirts on Thursday and again on August 20, the opening day of the 2014-15 school year. They’re designed to stand out like beacons of reassurance. They won’t be mandatory apparel throughout the year but the juniors and seniors who sport them as the new year begins will remain at the service of their assigned “cherubs” as they’re called in the handbook that Biggs distributed on Monday after some mood-setting exercises.

“Everybody take your imaginary cool card out of your pocket,” he instructed the trainees, “and tear it up.”

Then he led them through seemingly silly drills to make his point.

“Acting dorky can be a signal that you’re comfortable and unthreatening. The freshmen will show up acting like they’re too cool for school when actually they’re scared. Remember?”

Junior Annie Majure does.

“We actually went through some similar stuff when I reported for marching band as a freshman,” she recalled. Now she’s one of the drum majors and knows that extracurricular groups can be a key means of assimilating the 9th graders. “It’s not like I was treated badly by upperclassmen when I was new but I still think something like this is a good idea to absorb freshmen into student life right from the start.”

What do Majure and her fellow students think of their dorky and still relatively new principal? Ironically, that he’s pretty cool.

“Last year it was amazing how he’d meet kids one time and then remember them by name when we’d see him in the halls,” she said. “And I know my mom really appreciates the long, weekly voicemails he leaves.” The informative, extremely school-spirited ones that go out to all Rider households and are often still going strong when the telephone mailbox runs out of time and cuts them off.

“You guys are going to squash the rumors,” Biggs told the student leaders. And fly in the face of popular culture stereotypes about the miserable lot of high school freshmen. For instance, the Rider Crew training handbook includes nothing about how to give “swirlies” in the restrooms.

Monday morning the trainees role-played during a run-through of some of the activities Biggs has planned for the newcomers in the gym on Thursday when the veteran Roughriders will be sprinkled around the bleachers. Watching them get in touch with their inner 9th grade selves it appeared they haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be fresh and too self-conscious to show up for the first day of school in a look-at-me t-shirt. But the newbies may rest assured that their mentors will be recognizable even when they’re not clad in extreme orange. They’ll be the ones carrying themselves with the confidence that replaced the 9th grader-in-the-headlights look once high school became their school – and passing it on.

In no time at all the TRHS Class of 2018 should be ready to “Stand up and cheer for dear old Roosevelt…”

DMPS-TV Report of the Rider Crew Training Session

Photos of the Rider Crew Training Session