Across the country, high schools have found that their ninth-grade students have the highest rates of truancy, discipline referrals, failures, and retentions. A school's worst data points are usually found among freshmen. For this reason, proactive schools seek strategies for transitioning freshmen into high school. An effective freshman transition program focuses on making the ninth-grade year itself a year of transition. Many models for transitioning freshmen have been tried with varying degrees of success. In the author's work with schools across the country, he has found several key or essential components that must be present to maximize the impact of freshman transition programs. These components can exist within various structures and bell schedules, but they must be there. The author's experience has led him to determine that the best way to ensure that they exist is within a teaming model in which a group of teachers shares a group of students.