Bell Schedule

HAILEY CUTTER

2 years ago, the Cedar Rapids School District changed school schedules and times to help benefit student’s school experience. Though they meant to change it for the better, some people within Kennedy oppose of the idea. This controversial topic has shown high prevalence throughout the halls and in classroom discussions.

Prior to the change, we had 6 periods, each about 55 minutes long, currently we have 7 that are now 48. It was changed so that more electives were available for students to take in one semester. However, those extra opportunities came with more work to complete, now in less time. Some people who experienced the change like Lily Hartney, who is currently a senior at Kennedy, said that the change only made things worse. As of now, there isn’t as much time in class to learn the material or to ask question needed to complete an assignment that may have an upcoming deadline.

Another issue with our current schedule is that teachers are not always available to help during smart time. During smart time you don’t necessarily even get to go where you need. With the old schedule, we had smart lunch which was a period that was one hour long. During this time, students had options. They could either have two lunches, two ‘Smart Times’ or one of each. A and B lunches were each 30 minutes long, and both were available everyday besides Wednesday. This offered way more time and opportunities for students to ask questions or get help on something they were struggling.

Besides the loss of an entire 30 minutes, Lily argued that “Nowadays, the communications between students and teachers is just not there” Now, you never know where you are headed, what teachers are available, even what rooms will already be filled up by the time you get there. The whole idea is just very hectic. If you want to go somewhere to get help and even if that teacher has tutorial, the room may already be full. You may have to just wait until the next week to get help, and by then it may already be pointless.  If a teacher you need help from has a full room, usually that student just ends up using that period as a study hall. And if that student already has a study hall, it’s just generally wasted time. Of course there is an option to come after school, but that defeats the entire purpose of smart time.

With extra periods available, it is very easy for the people who want to get ahead to do so, but for the people who aren't really wanting or needing to get ahead, it pointless, and that’s a lot of kids. With kids getting ahead, teacher are bound to get behind. They now have another entire class to look after and plan for, and with that, tons more paper to grade. Having just one extra class can become very time consuming, and just like us, teachers have lives outside of school too. Ms McConnell, a language arts teacher at Kennedy says that it “reduces the workload a little bit” since there are less papers to grade. She also mentioned that since she has less students to focus on, it is a lot easier to help them out individually which is very beneficial. Since teachers have an added class to worry about,“Teachers [during smart time] don’t really want to do anything, they would rather just have it be their free period” To me at least, it’s understandable, but it doesn’t benefit the students.

   

Another downfall of our current schedule is just our lunch in general. Students still need to be able to socialize. Basically lunch used to be one hour long, and everyone had it at the same time. If they didn’t have any work to do or questions to ask, students would meet up with their friends. Many students don’t have any classes or their lunch with some of their close friends, and it can often break friendship. It does give students a chance to make new friends, but we shouldn't force that upon them. Students used to be able to meet up with their friends during lunch, but now you can’t unless you have the same lunch, and that rarely happens.

Due to these factors, the old schedule was more beneficial to students and teachers lives. Students can focus on their academics more in depth and get special attention from teachers. Students will be able to socialize and enjoy their high school experience more, while teachers can have manageable workloads. Overall, before the new change kids were able to have a more positive school experience and positive outlook towards school.