As the school year has started there have been some major changes to our campus. The biggest, and most controversial one, being our new bell schedule. Classes are now over an hour and a half long, with school ending at 3:35 p.m. We have 10 minute passing periods and no nutrition break. We also now have two tutorial periods which are on Friday mornings. This means school officially starts at 10:30 a.m. on Fridays. With this new schedule there are definitely some pros and cons that come with it and I wanted to research how everyone is feeling about it.
The schedule is most impactful to the students on campus, so first I interviewed a 15-year-old Helix Sophomore who says, “I don’t really like it that much honestly, last year’s schedule was a lot better.” When asked about her thoughts on the Friday schedule, she explained that, “It’s very different and a lot of the time I forget advisory is after second period and not third.” However, the Sophomore thinks tutorials will now be used more and personally doesn’t have a problem with getting to school in the morning for extra help. She also said her academic performance should improve due to the longer classes and extra time in Scottie Connect. The 15-year-old states that many of the other students agree with her and dislike the new schedule, saying, “I would definitely, 100%, go back to last year’s schedule, I like it so much more.”
When a staff member was asked, he started by saying, “[The longer classes] allow teachers and students to do more.” He has also noticed the longer classes have less kids showing up late which will benefit their education and the flow of the class. The staff member also went on to say that it wasn’t a huge jump to get used to, as he had had a similar schedule when he was a student at Helix. I asked him more questions about the Friday bell schedule and he said, “It reminds me of when I was a student. If you didn’t need to go to tutorials, you got to sleep in.” However, when asked if tutorials would be used more this year he explained that, “Some teacher tutorials would be used more, but only some. I teach in the same slot as math, and math will always draw more students than social science.” To summarize the interview he said, “I prefer last year’s bell schedule, not only for my own needs, but also for the needs of my students.”
I also wanted to compare the experience of our schedule to an outsider with a different schedule, so I interviewed a 14-year-old Freshman at Mission Bay High School. She started by saying how she enjoys her daily schedule, “We have longer periods due to the A and B days, and my old middle school didn’t have that. It helps because I don’t have to have eight classes in a day.” She explained how the long classes go by quickly and they do most of their work during the period. I asked her about how the rest of the student body might feel about their schedule and she said, “I think they like it as well because most of them came from middle schools who had similar schedules so they were all used to it. But some of us didn’t have that so it’s been a different adjustment.” Her school day starts at 8:45 a.m. and ends at 3:28 p.m. Compared to Helix, Mission Bay students are on campus 21 less minutes per day than we are (aside from Fridays). They also have a late start day the first Wednesday of every month compared to our late start day once a week.
Based on the interviews I gathered it seems that most people like last year’s schedule overall but they also love some of the new benefits this year has to offer because of the change in scheduling.
