TRAVERSE CITY -- Andrew Sheffer is days away from his first day of high school and he's excited and nervous. Mostly excited.
But he doesn't want to get lost this week trying to find his classes at Traverse City West Senior High.
At least his locker won't give him any trouble. It opens. He checked.
"That's one thing I'm not nervous about," said Andrew, 14, with a grin spreading across his face as he successfully lifted the latch.
Like Andrew, hundreds of ninth-graders will enter Traverse City's West and Central high schools Tuesday for the first day of classes.
It is the first time freshmen will attend the high schools since at least the 1950s.
"When I went to school, it was the same way," said Jenny Sheffer, Andrew's mother. "I supported it the whole time."
The reorganization is just one in a series of transitions taking place this fall.
School board members in July 2007 approved the restructuring, along with moving to a trimester grading schedule and shifting the district boundary to Division Street in an attempt to balance enrollment on both sides of town.
Plus, this year half the students in each building will be completely new to high school, since the schools also will gain new sophomores.
Helping younger students connect with peers and the school will ease the transition, educators say. To do so, both schools developed unique mentor programs that will pair incoming students with juniors and seniors.
"They'll talk to other students in minutes," said Kelly Rintala, a West teacher who coordinates the school's program. "It can take days for a teacher to break through."
At West, all of the roughly 450 freshmen will be paired with an upperclassman. Each of the 110 mentors will work with about six students and are expected to check in at least twice a week, Rintala said.
Central's nearly 30 mentors visited East Junior High 10 times in the spring, held an activities fair for new students and hosted an eighth grade dance in the high school cafeteria, teacher Toby Tisdale said.
The roughly 800 freshmen and sophomores will participate in an orientation program on the first day of classes Tuesday.
"We wanted them to be able to walk down the halls and know a handful of upperclassmen," Tisdale said. "I don't think we realize the impact that a peer has on another student."
The district was awarded about $2 million in federal funds in last fall as part of a five-year grant intended to create small learning environments in large high schools. The grant was used to launch the mentor programs.
At a West orientation session last week, MaKenzie Tremp, 17, sat cross-legged on a table as she talked about school spirit to a classroom full of incoming freshmen.
"I know it seems like it'll go on forever, but it's going to go quickly," she told them.
Later, she said the nerves the freshmen had early that morning seemed to have considerably eased by session's end.
"They don't really know how to get involved in the school yet," said MaKenzie, a senior. "Even this one day will lessen that fear and confusion."
Spencer Laubach is looking forward to having more freedom at West. But he still doesn't know what to expect.
Both Spencer, 14, and mother Nancy Laubach like the idea of a mentor program. But his mother still worries about the school's size.
"Only time will tell," she said. "There's good and bad with everything. You just have to make the best of it."
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