Walking the halls of a new high school — or even a familiar one — can be daunting.

At Jackson High School, the challenge for many students is: How to find your niche in a school of 1,900?

School staff has come up with a way to help students meet others with a program called Pack Time, new this year.

“We heard from students it was really hard to find a sense of community at Jackson because clubs meet before or after school,” said Judi Montgomery, school activities director.

The problem’s been more acute for freshman, who take the bus and can’t come early or stay late, she said.

So staff created Pack Time: Clubs meet for 25 minutes during the school day Mondays and Thursdays, with Interest Groups on Fridays. Students sign up for the clubs and most are held during Silent Sustained Reading period.

Clubs range from Badminton to Film to Theater Improvisation. Interest groups run the gamut from Yoga to Hunting.

Montgomery runs an Interest Group called Walk and Talk. She gives students a specific topic to discuss, asks them to grab a partner and they walk around campus, talking amongst themselves.

Another Interest Group, Girl Talk, meets in the locker room, where girls and three staff members discuss topics like self-esteem.

This Monday, Jan. 8, the Drug-Free Youth club kicked off their meeting with a human scavenger hunt. Students were given a piece of paper with categories like “Likes liver” and “Has never seen the movie ‘Top Gun’” and had to find people in the class who fit the description.

Most students talked one-on-one to find matches. Others took a blanket approach, shouting: “Who knows how to juggle?” and “Anyone born in March?”

Junior Greg Sranson, president of Drug-Free Youth, has met people he wouldn’t have otherwise met through the clubs, though he’s friends with people of different cliques anyway, he said.

He plays baseball after school, so sports is his scene, but through Pack Time clubs he’s met some sophomore leadership students, he said.

“I’d say people mingle more there, it seems,” he said.

Brittany Frounfelter, a junior who participates in Drug-Free Youth, said the people she’s met are the kind of people she’d hang out with anyway.

“It’s good to meet new people,” she said.

The atmosphere in the lunch room or hall and the atmosphere in the clubs is about the same, she said, except that kids who are using drugs can reach out for help in clubs like Drug-Free Youth.

“In the lunchroom, they might be influencing them to do drugs, or in the hall,” she said. “(The club) wouldn’t do that.”

When asked if joining the clubs was better than sitting through Silent Sustained Reading (which still runs Tuesdays and Wednesdays) Sranson laughed.

“It’s fun — you get to go talk,” he said. “Reading is not a hobby of mine.”

Montgomery said she’s seen more student engagement since the program started and that kids are excited about the clubs.

“The clubs are overcoming some of the divisiveness kids have,” she said.

The goal is to help them academically too.

“If we can get buy-in by them early to get more involved,” she said. “Research says that kids who are involved do better in the classroom.”