Tyler Ryan — with the help of upper class students — gave 456 incoming Sierra High freshmen their first, and arguably most important, high school lesson on Monday morning.

And it can be summed up in one word: Engage.

“You have a chance to be a better person,” Ryan told the Class of 2030 as they filled three quarters of the Timberwolves gym home bleachers three days before the start of school on Thursday.

The science teacher oversees Link Crew — a program that empowers students to help students to succeed in their transition to high school and to maximize what they can gain over the four year experience not just academically, but as a person overall.

The student Link Crew volunteers draw on their training and own experiences not just to introduce freshmen to high school but to serve as mentors throughout the year.

“It’s a chance to start fresh, no matter what happened in kindergarten through eighth grade,” Ryan noted.

Ryan said one way to do that is to make new friends and to try new things, whether it is clubs, helping with student activities, or sports.

And what better way to start than to challenge students — who may not know each other — to work together to try and pop balloons placed behind their back and that of another in front of their classmates?

The laughter and attention generated by the challenge that might strike some as silly was anything but. It’s called an icebreaker but it also was a lesson.

Not only did it engage students in the crowd — including several that had sat the first 10 minutes of the assembly heads bowed slightly, nervously looking at their hands — but those selected to try and pop balloons to improvise on how to accomplish the task.

Sierra High Principal Steve Clark knows the value of the Link Crew program.

Not only was he the coordinator for Sierra High when he was a teacher in 1998-99, but benefited from the program himself as a Manteca High freshmen when Sierra High was still a cornfield.

“It’s an effective year-long mentoring program,” Clark said.

The activities the freshmen engaged in with the Link Crew volunteers were designed to get them out of their comfort zone and interact with others, most of whom they hadn’t known until Monday.

One such exercise started with each seated row of bleachers lining up shoulder to shoulder on the gym floor flanking a Link Crew member.

From there, Ryan had each line go from tallest to shortest and then in order of their month of birth from January to December with no talking allowed to do so.

Instead, they relied on hand gestures whether it was to compare height by moving flattened hand from forehead to forehead or communicating months using fingers.

Ingenuity and improvision aside, it was about communicating with strangers.

The Link Crew volunteers continued to double down on the concept by then having every two rows face each other with another random pairing with “strangers” for the next exercise by reaching across the line between spaces, extending arms, and connecting fist with fist.

“Before you leave Sierra High, you are going to make an impact,” Ryan stressed, and not just on others but on yourself.

Similar Link Crew programs are being conducted at Manteca, Sierra, Lathrop, and Weston Ranch high schools.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com