As you all know, we had Friday off a couple of weeks ago. What you may not know is that the reason we didn’t have school that day was because our staff was meeting with a scheduling company to organize a brand new schedule for next school year. We don’t have the complete schedules yet, but our teachers have a lot of information concerning the schedule. I interviewed six teachers about our schedule, and, while some said less than others, I got a rough idea of what our new schedule may look like.

“I believe it gives kids more time to pursue things they’re interested in, and the students should like it,”  said Mr. Miller

“The new schedule seems very student-centered. I’m excited about it,” Mrs. Sikes said.

“It gives students great opportunities to do creative things in class because we will have more time in class to do things as a group,” Mrs. Loomis said.

“They all look really cool, but I can’t really know until I see the finished product. I like how the change is looking right now,” said Mr. Cox.

“There are options for the schedule. They’re all rotating and we don’t have every class everyday. Every class will be around 70 minutes. It’s simple and easy for students and adults to remember. We can choose from three options and mix and choose ones we like, so we’re not bound to one schedule,” Ms. Peek said.

“I liked the schedule because there were longer classes, which is better for teachers, and there were less classes a day. We don’t have the same classes every day, like a block day. There are lots of breaks; including a free/art period, which they called a “passion period.” It’s basically a time for you to pursue something you love, like drama or robotics, that you might not have time to do otherwise. It’s very student friendly and better for students and teachers. They also mentioned ”special schedule day,” which is a schedule we would follow every time we had a special event in the day. For example: if we had a pep rally, we would follow the special schedule that day, and if we had a special meeting another day, we’d follow the same special schedule,’’ Mr. Inman said.

From what all these teachers said, you can tell that the new schedule will be more like a block day everyday. This will give us more time to do our homework and will generate less stress. We’ll have a lot more free time and they seem to be putting in a lot more time for fine arts. The “passion period” could be a great time for everyone to do some things they might not have time to do, and I’m happy we are now given the opportunities to do new or fun things.

It also seems that the planners and teachers are really trying to help the students to have more free time and cut down on homework. I have also been told by our teachers that chapel and assembly will be moved to an earlier time, so the day will end 10-15 minutes earlier. Next school year, once summer is over, there will be a bright side about coming back to school. We will have a brand new schedule that will cut down on homework and give us some free time to do things we’re interested in. This will be a much needed and interesting change in the upper school that we can all look forward to.