When the big day finally arrived, four hundred and twenty freshmen flooded the campus eager to experience Walla Walla High School’s Freshman Orientation made possible by GEAR UP dollars and leadership.
The day began with an opening assembly lead by Mr. Shaw, English teacher and one of Wa-Hi’s Link Crew Coordinators. Mr. Shaw’s booming voice and naturally likable personality immediately grabbed the students’ attention as he welcomed the class of 2014, and initiated the day’s activities with some fun, interactive student games.
 After the opening assembly, the freshmen were paired with their Link Crew Leaders who had the pleasure of dressing up with their freshmen in themed costumes and parading around campus.
There were hard hats and party hats, umbrellas and caution tape, geeks and freaks, and even a few karate-chopping, black-belted ninjas. The campus was full of energy and laughter as each group took pride in their outfits—the more outlandish the better.
The freshmen and their leaders wore their costumes throughout the day’s get-to-know-you games, informational sessions, and rambunctious activities creating an immediate sense of bonding among the members of each group.
 By the time the freshmen entered the day’s closing ceremony, there was a distinct sense of community, comfort, and acceptance among the freshmen. Unsurprisingly this camaraderie made them all the more excitable and rowdy (in a good way) when Mr. Shaw began drawing student names to receive GEAR UP’s participation prizes.
Of course, the excitement may also have had something to do with the fact the prizes were highly desirable: including gift certificates, backpacks, hoodies, and even two ipod nanos.
To end the day Mr. Shaw left the freshmen with some food for thought: “A day is very much like a dollar,” he said pulling a dollar out of his pocket and holding it up for the kids to see. “You can spend it on something you need, you can invest it, or you can waste it.”
Then, without any warning, he ripped the dollar into pieces and let them float carelessly to the floor. A small gasp, followed by a murmur of questions rippled through his now captivated audience.
He waited until the comments began dying down, then pulled another bill from his pocket and held it up in the same way he had held the first bill just before he ripped it. “Now, take this twenty…”he began, but before he could say anymore the students broke out in earnest protest. The air filled with panicked grasps and shouts of “Nooooo!” and “Don’t do it!”.
“You see, days are like dollars,” Mr. Shaw told the students still holding up the bill. “If you waste one day—skip school, don’t do your homework-’So what,’ you think, ‘It’s just one day.’ But, like dollars, your days add up one at a time, until you’ve wasted a week, a month, a whole year…
“Your job,” he said, finally putting the twenty back in his pocket much to the relief of everyone in the room, “is to earn the investment of your days at school.”
Before their final dismissal from orientation, Mr. Shaw asked the freshmen to do one last thing, to shout out if they were determined to graduate on time. The deafening roar of yah’s that ensued from the freshmen class made it evident the speech had clearly accomplished Mr. Shaw’s goal and had a definite impact on the students. |
The GEAR UP Academic Lab at Walla Walla High School has been a critical educational resource for several years now, and this school year is no exception. In fact, this year GEAR UP has enrolled additional help and increased the scope of its services to meet the growing awareness of the Lab’s instrumental role in helping students succeed in school. 
The Lab is a focused-attention environment geared towards engaging students in active learning. Students may attend Academic Lab voluntarily, or by teacher referral. For referral students, the Lab works in collaboration with teachers and parents to ensure student accountability and progress in Lab. 
The Lab is in daily contact with parents keeping them up-to-date on their student’s progress and attendance record. Maintaining regular communication with parents has played a vital role, not only in building consistency in Lab attendance, but also in creating relationships with parents which have proved invaluable to the progress of Lab students. 
Average students who have a desire to succeed, or that develop a desire while attending Lab, often see clear, positive results in their grades in as little as two weeks. In due course, even failing students can see passing grades on their report cards, and experience the joy that comes with fulfilling their high school educational requirements and graduating on time. 
Amidst the last fleeting days of summer leading up to Freshman Orientation and the beginning of the 2010 school year, eighty-four Walla Walla High School juniors and seniors chose to forgo one last summer hurrah, and instead, gathered together with their fellow classmates in the school gym for one very good cause: GEAR UP’s Link Crew Leadership Camp. 
GEAR UP’s Link Crew at WAHI is aimed at creating dynamic relationships between entering freshmen and upperclassmen by strategically pairing them in mentor/mentee relationships using the knowledge and rapport of the older students to connect with the entering freshmen and guide them on their journey into high school. 
Many other leadership qualities were also addressed in training including how to personally be a good leader, how to be confident, but humble, how to really get to know another person, and how to take negative comments and turn them into positive statements. 
Walla Walla High School students are opening doors for their AVID program this year by advocating for AVID outside the school system in an effort to gain awareness and support from local community leaders. 
For their presentation, the students used their stories to show the National Exchange members how AVID had positively influenced their lives and the lives of their fellow classmates. 
Freshman Algebra: if they don’t get it right the first time, they spend the next three years of high school struggling to make up for it. 
Students have the option of working individually from home during the six week camp, but must join their classmates four days a week for two hours in the WAHI library where they will receive assistance from two GEAR UP tutors, a WAHI math teacher, and the WAHI credit retrieval teacher. 
On Thursday, May 13th, GEAR UP’s new program College Coaches wrapped up it 2010 spring session with a closing ceremony at the beautiful Reid Center building on Whitman College’s main campus. 
At the ceremony, each participating high school student received an award of recognition from GEAR UP. The kids were proud to receive their awards from GEAR UP, but the real entertainment of the evening commenced when the students received an additional, specialized award from their college coaches. 
The messages and certificates were a significant representation of the kinds of mentoring relationships students and coaches had developed working together through College Coaches. One coach even gave a gift to her mentee: a book personally chosen for a student who had expressed a growing interest in reading. (You know you’ve accomplished something when a child is excited to receive a book as a gift!)