News
Advisory elimination
Kirra Herron photo
As of last year block scheduling started, but also advisory was every day of the week for 15 minutes. Next year students will have advisory once a week for 30 minutes every Wednesday. This will make classes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 90 minutes long.
Principal Doug Wheeler noticed that advisory every day of the week may have not have been a good idea for students.
“The research said that having advisory every day of the week worked for students and helped students but I guess Hoover proved them wrong,” Wheeler said.
With having advisory every day of the week the attendance was not strong in advisory and with the length of advisory teachers can’t get much done.
“Teachers will be able to provide consistence in what is going on in advisory. Like the extended length of the class helps with more learning. So the same thing as advisory. It will make advisory more special once a week. Hopefully have better attendance too,” Wheeler said.
Learning transitions and resources teacher Marjorie Flowers sees positives and negatives in this change.
“I see it as a smaller learning community. We have to be more focused on that one time a week. With that though that means not having a community,” Flowers said.
Sophomore Miranda Murr who used homeroom time for homework and to relax will miss homeroom but she thinks it is a good idea.
“We waste more time, we can have more times for electives and class. I will miss the time to relax and do homework,” Murr said.
With the incoming freshmen it may be a little bit harder to have that relationship or connection with their homeroom teacher.
“It will be harder. It took awhile last year. I was new and I had a freshmen class. If it would be once a week we would still be working on it,” Flowers said.
Murr feels that sometimes homeroom can be wasted time on the days when students don’t have anything for homeroom to do.
“We won’t waste time just sitting there when there is no information,” Murr said.
Teachers and staff will be setting up a committee to see what requirements there will be.
Although it is a once a week class students will still get credit and it will still be pass or fail. Wheeler will also go to S.P.I.R.I.T. (a student lead group) what they think too.
“We will form an advisory committee and we will look at what needs to be happening at each grade level and put together a calendar to know what is going on,” Wheeler said, “I think I will ask the S.P.I.R.I.T. group what they want to do. I ask students first then go to teachers. Students are smart; if we don’t listen to them then we are stupid.”