Helping students strive to give others a chance to make long-lasting friendships has always been a primary goal of Best Buds. The club returns, trying get even more students to sign up and get their members in more out of school activities.

Special education teacher Christine Bosley loves being an adviser for Best Buds.

“Best Buds is a group where students want to spend more time socializing and interacting with others, so we get together and practice implementing different social skills, and just giving students a chance to make new friends and have a good time together,” said Bosley. “[Best Buds] wants to provide a chance for people to make friends and to spend time together in an environment that’s a safe and accepting place.”

The club usually has up to 60 members sign up in the beginning of the year, but a large portion of the students drop out due to other activities and because they may lose interest.

Junior Hailey Myers is the new president of Best Buds this year and wants to have many of its members to continue showing up to meetings.

“I’ve always loved the reactions and how it helps people in the school,” said Myers. “I hope to achieve that we have more people join and create really good friendships out of it because in the past, we’ve had people show up and then never show up again. I want people to show up consistently.”

Besides getting more members to remain interested in the club, Best Buds also wants to get involved in more out-of-school activities.

Special Education teacher Patti McGee wants to get the students more involved with each other by attending football games together and doing community service work.

“Best Buds is a group of kids that are looking to make a difference in the lives of kids who have some disabilities, and I think that forming friendships and being role models helps them,” said McGee. “Every month we can have an out-of-school event.”

The club is also welcoming science teacher Kristen Johnson, also known as Coach K. to many students, as one of the new advisers.

“We have a new adviser, Coach K., who has some fabulous ideas. We’re also doing volunteer work after school. We plan on cleaning up the trail, which we plan on doing in the late fall,” said McGee.

With new activities planned out for the club, the group strives to compete against other student responsibilities.

“Depending on the time of the year impacted how many people could stay after school for our meetings. So our smallest meetings were maybe 15 to 20 students, but we also had big meetings that had up to 50 students,” said Bosley.

With the group getting new additions and different activities planned, the officers of the club are all returning.

“I’m a little nervous, but I’m pretty confident about [being president] because I was vice president last year, and I know how the club works,” said Myers. “I’ve always wanted to help the life skills students, and it was an easy way to do that while having fun. [Best Buds] gave me a lot of happiness.”

Best Buds also plans on teaming up with fellow support club, Aevidum. The first meeting is on Thursday, September 22, and students can sign up to join outside of classroom 230.