Endeavour offers a wild welcome to next year's newcomers

Watch out! Is that a lion in the lunchroom? A crocodile in the classroom? Current Endeavour Elementary students held a safari open house to show next year's newcomers the lay of the land.

More than 500 students from Cascade Ridge, Discovery, Challenger, and the pre-kindergarten community attended and took an exotic tour of Endeavour Elementary School. They got their passports stamped as they learned critical jungle survival tips: how to find the health room, what the yellow line in the bus area means, how to buy lunch …

Because Endeavour has a new enrollment area next school year, many new students will fill the halls this fall. The transition team – composed of staff and parents from Endeavour's current and future enrollment areas – has been creatively thinking of ways to generate student excitement about the new makeup of the student body. The well-attended safari was the transition team's final of four welcoming activities. One of the previous events was a pen-pal program in which current and incoming students got a head-start in connecting and becoming friends.

A mother of a current Discovery Elementary student said the safari did help her daughter get excited about the new school. "We've always heard it's a wonderful school," she added, "but you can really feel how homey it is here!"