“‘Sko Ridge? ‘Sko Ridge”

Isabella Mahal

Mr. Marshall’s advisory class poses at the end of their Flintstones-themed music video. Photo Credit: Isabella Mahal

At 7:30 a.m. on Friday, August 18, the school year began for more than six hundred incoming freshmen at Fossil Ridge High School. They entered the school the same way they will leave it in four years – through a tunnel of staff members and Fossil students – and took their seats in the Performing Arts Center, or the PAC. The ninth graders listened to their peers explain the purpose of orientation and of the tunnel, both of which are meant to “get freshmen excited about being Sabercats.” Brad Nye, assistant principal, adds that orientation makes freshmen “more comfortable with the environment, helps them know where their classes are, and helps them meet their teachers. It’s a less stressful environment than having the other 1,500 students surrounding them.”

Some students, like freshman Ethan Kramer, are ready to jump right into the new experience. For him, “[Middle school] just kinda got old, you just go to the same classes and it is a pretty small area.” Now, he’s taking metals and Spanish alongside a full set of core classes. Kramer is on the soccer team, and hopes to run track in the spring.

After the students listened to their counselors and Julie Chaplain, interim principal, explain the purpose of advisory, they were dismissed from the PAC. They then headed to their advisory classrooms to meet the teachers and peers they will spend the next four years with. Several student volunteers joined each class as well, and advisory teachers and leaders took turns introducing themselves to the class.

Ashlyn Cook and Emily Lukasik are members of National Honor Society, and they volunteered to show incoming freshmen around the building and play games with them during orientation. Cook explained that some of the students were really open to her guidance and came up and asked her for help finding their classes, which “others pretend like they know where they’re going.” Lukasik remembers people showing her where to go on her own freshmen orientation day and helping her out, which made her feel like part of Fossil’s community.

The next step for Fossil’s new freshmen was another tradition – making a music video with their advisory class. Each class was given a television show theme song ranging from Ghostbusters to Big Bang Theory and was responsible for brainstorming, choreographing, performing, and filming a video for the entire freshmen class to view at the end of the day. These tasks were broken up by class rotations, in which students had seven minute passing periods to mimic an average school day.

Espen Marston is another incoming freshman, and he’s especially excited to try out the arts and theater programs at Fossil. He already knows some teachers and upperclassmen, which makes him more confident, though he wishes that he could have walked through his classes “three or four more times.” However, he knows where to find most important things and who to ask if he can’t.

After lunch, when students had the opportunity to buy food in the cafeteria, they headed back to their advisory classrooms to finish their music videos. Students got creative, making posters filled with “Dwayne the Fish Johnson” for their Spongebob Squarepants music video and heading outside to do parkour for The Flintstones. Nye hoped that orientation would give students “a little bit of an idea what it’s like to be a part of the Sabercat family,” and the new Sabercats seemed to feel just that.

With about an hour to go in the first day of school, everyone headed back to the PAC for the final viewing of the music videos. They were interspersed with advertisements for the Color Dance, which will be held on Friday, August 25 at 6:30 p.m., and for Club Rush, on Friday, September 30 during Advisory. Students were dismissed from the PAC at 2:50, marking the end of their first day of “being part of Ridge Nation.” As leaders from Ms. Cooper’s advisory put it, “we really are a family.”

Students from Ms. Cooper’s advisory class get to know each other and work on posters to hold up in their music video.