When she was in middle school, Brieah says the thought of high school used to scare her. 

Now that she’s a freshman, she doesn’t feel that way. 

“I actually enjoy it here,” she says. 

She used to worry about the pressures of school and of always having to be mature. But all that started to fade away at her freshman orientation. 

There, she was paired up with two seniors who asked her about herself and introduced her to classmates. She took a tour of the school and learned how to navigate the ins-and-outs of opening a locker. 

They broke down class schedules and all of the names of ninth-grade teachers.  

Brieah works through a math problem with Jackie Theoharis, an instructional assistant, in her freshman algebra class at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. Her transition into high school wasn’t what she expected. “I have tried so many new things,” she says. “And we aren’t even halfway through the year.” Nearly 90% of freshmen at Neah-Kah-Nie are involved with at least one extracurricular activity. Photo by Tracey Goldner. 

The seniors -- my seniors, as she calls them -- sang songs, taught her the school chant -- dubbed the Classic Pirate Yell -- and invited her to join in so she’d be ready for football games and assemblies.  

They talked about all the clubs she could join -- drama, art, choir, leadership, film, music, sports, Dungeons and Dragons -- there seemed to be something for everyone.  

She started to have fun and thought, “Maybe being weird isn’t bad.” Maybe it’s how you develop deeper connections with people. 

“That opened my eyes,” she says of her experience. 

Brieah arrives at her freshman orientation on Aug. 22 at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. “I’ve seen so many high schoolers who are like ‘ew freshmen,’ she says. But juniors and seniors at Neah-Kah-Nie who are part of a student-led initiative called Link Crew are changing that narrative. “What do you need, do you know where you’re going, what’s happening?” are all questions she heard from those juniors and seniors this year. Photo by Christy Hartford. 

When she arrived for her first day of high school, she felt more confident knowing how to navigate the halls and the schedule. 

She realized the leaders from her orientation were wearing their light blue Link Crew shirts again. In a sea of students, they were the ones she could go to without judgment or stress. 

You might expect me to go to a teacher, Brieah says. “But the seniors just get it.”

“It’s really nice to hear from someone who has the same experience as you.”

This year she’s hoping to land her first job and start saving for a car. Looking back on her transition from middle school to high school, Brieah says she feels like a different person. 

But it’s not just her. At this coastal high school in Rockaway Beach, change is afoot. 

Although the initiative existed more than a decade ago, this year’s freshmen are the first-ever group to participate at this depth and breadth.  

Research shows students are especially vulnerable during the switch from middle to high school, but there are research-backed ways to help them navigate this tenuous period of their lives. One of the most effective is a program called Link Crew -- which connects freshmen with upperclassmen at various points during that first year of high school. 

Families were hungry for change at the school, including more support for freshmen. 

Margaret Whiting, the school counselor at Neah-Kah-Nie, helped roll out an intra-grade initiative this year in which juniors and seniors connect with freshmen at crucial moments during the school year. She and colleague Jaime Simpson visited Tigard High School to confer with educators who run a similar program there. They also attended a three-day nuts and bolts training in California over the summer. Photo by Christy Hartford. 

Her first stop was a trip to Tigard High School to see how another Oregon school was already implementing it. Tigard has been successfully running Link Crew for a number of years, but started making waves when they switched the program from a club to a class and then from a teacher-led initiative to a student-led one. 

At Tigard, Margaret met some of the 75 Link Crew leaders and heard about the projects she and her team would later adopt -- freshman orientation, club rush, tailgates and student tutoring. 

Some of Tigard’s upcoming events included an end-of-year field day and a study lunch club. The class even had a social media marketing team to help get the word out about events. 

She was awed by how much the students loved the projects and by how the freshmen seemed to be responding to it. The trip was one of 20 hosted by Northwest Regional Education Service District’s 9th Grade Success Network last year. 

Her next step was assembling a team of educators to recruit students. The junior and senior classes have more than 100 students between them, so she had plenty of students to choose from. But she says the team shied away from the usual suspects like student body officers.  

“We want to grow student leaders,” she says. She looked for students with potential who weren’t already involved in the student council and personally invited them to apply. 

One of those students was Daniel, a junior who grew up in Rockaway Beach. His parents worked for many years at Twin Rocks, a local retreat center, so he was familiar with camp work and wanted to bring a camp counselor feel to the role. 

He said he jumped at the opportunity to apply when Margaret presented it. 

The motto of the nationwide Link Crew program is to play more and say less, so singing and dancing are a big part of the experience.

He learned that building trust starts with being vulnerable, so he wanted to model that to the students. Freshmen now fondly remember him as the one who led the moose song, which tells a lyrical tale of a moose named Fred who likes to drink a lot of juice and even gets some in his hair. 

Daniel with his artwork (top left) in the art studio at Neah-Kah-Nie High School. Once you show people that it’s OK to be open and silly, they will want to join in with everybody else, he says of creating a fun and psychologically safe space for students. 

He was really proud when one especially soft-spoken student in his small group started speaking in full sentences. 

“I hadn’t ever heard them speak one or two words,” Daniel says. “It was really cool to see how open they were to sharing.” 

He says he’s really appreciative of the culture shift he’s had a hand in shaping this year. 

Although he enjoyed his freshman year and made a lot of friends on various sports teams, he says upperclassmen didn’t interact with the freshmen like they do now. 

Teachers and students have told him school feels different this year. He feels it, too. 

He now views school not only as a place to learn and grow academically but also as a place to learn how to be a friend to other people. 

Despite all of the work it required -- and it did require a hefty load of planning, project managing and mentoring -- Margaret says it’s well worth it. Plus she has the benefit of experience on her side and a bevy of templates to pull from now.   

About 55 of the school’s 62 freshmen -- or about 90% -- are involved in at least one extracurricular activity this year -- up from about 43 last year. And most are involved in more than one. 

The activity bus, which runs late so students can stay at school and participate in extracurriculars, is often packed, and staff have to encourage students to head home because so many want to stay as long as possible. 

Principal Christy Hartford jokes that she doesn’t need to look at data to see the results of this work, though she does have that in spades. Major behavior referrals stand at just five this school year and only one of those involves a freshman. 

More students are coming to school regularly and arriving on time. So far, every freshman is on track to graduate in four years. 

From left: Ryan Keefauver, assistant principal at Neah-Kah-Nie, Christy Hartford, principal, and Margaret Whiting, school counselor, are already planning for a second year of Link Crew at the school next year. “Freshman year is when you expect to see those disruptive behaviors, but this program mitigated that,” Christy says. 

Although it’s too early to tie any assessment data like graduation rates or freshmen on-track rates -- the indicator that measures how many students have at least a quarter of the credits they need to graduate by the end of freshman year -- to this work, the school has seen steadily rising on-track and graduation rates since the COVID-19 pandemic subsided.  

The graduation rate was 85% last year, up from 78% during the throes of the pandemic but still not back to the pre-pandemic level of 90%. 

Notably, historically underserved students like those who are Black, Latino or mixed race or experiencing poverty or disabilities, are graduating at much higher rates than years past. Last year, 93% of underserved students graduated compared to 73% in 2017 -- a 20 point jump.

Underserved Graduation Rates at Neah-Kah-Nie and the State

Looking back on her efforts, Margaret says this initiative is all about building people up -- whether that’s through leadership or connection. 

Christy agrees. Starting with the students for this particular project and others is the right approach, she says. She has seen firsthand that when you give a student the chance to lead -- especially one who wouldn’t necessarily run toward an opportunity like that -- it changes them.  

Last year when a student was caught vaping, Christy took a different approach than she might have in years past. Instead of suspending the student, she invited her to present to her health class alongside the school’s student health team. The student talked about what she learned and why vaping isn’t the right choice. 

“You could have heard a pin drop in that classroom,” she says of her presentation about how she got caught and how she worked toward quitting.

Her mom later shared that marked the first time her daughter felt she made a positive impact at school. 

Ryan Hamilton, a professional learning coach who co-leads NWRESD’s 9th Grade Success Network, helped facilitate the trip to Tigard High School last year. He also helps educators rethink their culture and climate, set up systems to regularly track student progress and meaningfully support students who are falling behind.

Ryan Hamilton, a professional learning coach at Northwest Regional Education Service District, has advised Neah-Kah-Nie High School educators for the past five years. Ryan says schools see results like the ones Neah-Kah-Nie is seeing when they promote connection and leadership among students. 

He describes Neah-Kah-Nie’s story as part of a larger movement in education -- one that is moving away from punitive policies that push students out and toward practices that welcome students in and support learning through reflection and growth.

“The characteristics of rebelliousness are the same as some of the characteristics of leadership,” Ryan says. He appreciates how Margaret and Christy think critically about how to give students the chance to lead. 

“Feeling like you had an impact at your school can change your life,” he says. 

That resonates for Brieah. She’s already looking forward to leading freshmen at her school when she’s an upperclassman. 

For her, leadership is about creating the right conditions for people to grow. 

“Leadership isn’t just about controlling a whole group of people,” she says. “It’s about letting other people have opinions and feel safe around you.”