In an effort to promote interdepartmental interactions, the FRIENDS students have begun a new mail delivery system. This mail delivery system is placed in each department office so teachers can send short messages to each other through it.

According to Special Services teacher Marybeth Griffin, the message center is also a vocational opportunity for the students in this program. The vocational opportunities will help these students in future jobs and complete tasks they will have after they graduate from school.

“We came up with this idea because we figured it would get them out and about and sort of force them have conversations with people they may not know and then at the same time have to follow specific steps,” Griffin said.

The steps that students need to follow include going to the message center, taking the notes out, going back to the FRIENDS’ room and then sorting them before they go back out and distribute the notes.

“I like delivering the mail because it’s my job – I like sorting,” senior Jay Joo said.

This system is a new idea for the FRIENDS program and the next step with this project will be having the students wear their lanyards and have a note on them so that staff members will know what the student is working on.

In additional to being beneficial to students in the future, it is a way for teachers to talk to people that they normally wouldn’t talk to because the high school is such a big building.

English teacher James Carter said, “I think it’s a great way of getting the FRIENDS program involved in a broader sense of the building and regularly bringing them into departmental offices. I also think it’s a great way to combat the compartmentalized departmental nature of this building. We get separated out into our own individual departments so often that it’s a great way of being able to have a little bit of fun and build some of community and connecting between the departments instead of being isolated into our own departments.”