Niles West transfer students attended a team-building mentor workshop on Tuesday, Sept. 11 in order to be familiarized with the students and staff of the school, as well as to communicate with other transfer students and get to know them better.

This new team-building workshop for transfer students was created this year. The idea is completely new and has never been done in previous years. Counselor Hope Kracht said that this new workshop was to specifically support these transfer students, who were from various years. There were groups made up of each specific year, along with the mentors making sure the students were working together to accomplish various team building activities.

According to Kracht, these exercises were not only to allow the students to work with their classmates together, but also to teach them some valuable lessons.

“[This workshop] allows them to understand the need to take chances and to take risks. We also need to show them that Niles West is a welcoming and good school,” Kracht said.

Counselor Yvonne Miller agrees with Kracht and is very glad that the students are accommodated with the people they are going to be spending a majority of their time with in high school. She hopes that the transfer students will get to know each other better and help each other out.

“Most of the students have already started figuring out who the leaders are in certain activities, so they’re all finding their own strengths. And what they have in common is that they are all new here,” Miller said.

Many of the students have moved here from the different suburbs in Illinois, as well as other states. Some students have come here from different countries, or have parents who recently moved to the U.S. and have moved to a new town, where the students are completely new to the society and neighborhood.

The transfer students from the suburbs outside of Niles feel very happy about the change and are confident of Niles West.

“We like it. It’s nice here. We’re from Ridgewood High School in Ridgewood, and it’s different here because we’ve always come from a small school with 600 people altogether, so it’s different being here, ” said sophomores Jessica Lamantia and Jennifer Lamantia.

Those students who moved here from a completely different state have also expressed excitement and positivity about their move to Niles, Illinois. They feel as if Niles West is very welcoming and the teachers and students are wonderful.

“This school is terrific. It’s enormous, and it’s easy to navigate around. All the teachers and students are really nice. The athletics are nice, and I can do many sports. I even hear the clubs are awesome, even though I am not a part of any,” said freshman Blake Verstraete. Verstraete moved to Niles from Florida and hopes to join the Niles West basketball team.

Even the upperclassmen transfer students are positive about this new change. According to junior Zechariah Quirante, who is going to be graduating at the end of this year, he likes Niles West because he has more friends here than in Houston, Texas, which is where he used to live previously.

“In previous schools, I didn’t have many friends. I have more friends here because when I first came to America, I lived here and made friends, so it’s nice,” he said.

The peer mentors are also content with his new workshop and expressed their happiness with the program.

“I think they [the transfer students] like it and it helps them to understand the school and they know Niles West better because of it and because it is trying to help them adjust to the school,” said junior Asma Hussain, a peer mentor.