This year faculty and administrators are starting a new program at ODA. The program is called “The Little-Big Buddy Program” which is where rising seniors from the class of 2015, will pair up individually with rising freshmen from the class of 2018. 

The program was originally put into action when the faculty met with this year’s seniors and ninth graders earlier this year.  The purpose of that meeting was to explore how get the seniors to interact with the freshmen, sharing their high school experiences and giving the underclass freshmen advice about a successful high school career. 

It was in this initial meeting that Mrs. Murphy, and a few other faculty members presented the program to this year’s rising juniors. The process of getting a freshmen “Little” assigned involved first filling out a personality form.  The students were then paired up based upon similar responses. This way, each Big and Little had something in common with each other.

Last Thursday during the Juniors’ class meeting, students were presented with an envelope containing the name of the 8th grader they were matched with. Because faculty members thought it was important to match genders, some juniors were matched with two “Littles.”

While the juniors knew all about their buddies, the 8th graders were left knowing almost nothing. Eighth graders received only a personality form, and were told that they may receive and older buddy for next year.

As head of the program, Mrs. Murphy has worked hard to put this great opportunity together for next year.

“Our mission is to help these rising freshmen not only make the transition into high school, but also to give these new underclassmen wise advice from our rising seniors.”

“There is a lot of knowledge in the Junior class, our hopes are that the upperclassmen will shed their experiences and give wise advise to these rising freshmen as they become high school students,” says Mrs. Murphy.

To start the program,  the Junior class decorating the 8th graders’ cubbies, and left special treats for each of their buddies. They continued to leave treats until Wednesday afternoon at Ovation in the Black Box Theater.

Today the buddies all lined up on one side of the Black Box as the juniors were on the opposite side directly across from them. Each “Big and Little” had a string in front of them, which was tangled all throughout the black box, under chairs, doors and other obstacles. Upperclassmen and underclassmen would have to untangle all of the ropes and eventually meeting each other in the middle of their string.

This new program is truly a great way to get underclassmen to be more active with the upperclassmen here at ODA. Students are very excited and are looking forward to the new friendship.