Two years ago, a mysterious seventh hour appeared on students’ schedules, but why? Well, a new class called advisory was being established, the goal of which was, and still is, to offer students support, work time and opportunities to make up assignments and tests. It took place after fourth hour on most Wednesdays. While it was a full hour, all six other hours were shortened to roughly forty minutes. Even though it disrupted classes, it gave many students much-needed time to do the previously mentioned goals. Last year, it was, for the most part, accepted and appreciated by the student body.
However, after a vote from the teachers, this routine schedule was disrupted in place of a new, confusing and frankly, irritating one. Advisory is now after second hour, then followed by fourth hour and lunch, and finally third, fifth and sixth hour. While I’m sure this schedule will become routine in the coming months, there is still much to be said about the confusion, lack of necessity and disregard for students’ needs.
Simply put, this schedule not only disrupts the norm unnecessarily, but it isolates people, since many can’t have lunch with friends anymore. We all know how irritating it can be not having friends in your lunch, and advisory was the optimal solution. Whether it was to talk with that one friend you don’t have any classes with, or to finally have someone to talk to at lunch, advisory was central to the social well-being of BHS students.
Besides the social impacts, students are up in arms about the chaotic and mixed-up schedule. They are confused and even irritated by the fact that their entire flow through the day is completely disrupted. Students at lunch eat before 10:30am, and then have to go through four more classes throughout the day. This impacts many students, especially those with after-school activities and sports, who already have to wait to go home; now, they spend a longer period of time being hungry.
“I have a hard time with the new advisory schedule because it changes the hours around, and it makes it extremely confusing, and it throws off my mental schedule,” senior Bee Canfield said. “Plus, on days when I have [play] rehearsal, the new schedule scrambles my brain and makes me feel more out of it.”
Canfield is just one of many who participate in a multitude of after-school activities, and I’m sure their well-being is worth the time and energy to figure out a better schedule for advisory. Better yet, keep it the way it was. Students were neither confused nor forced to eat at ridiculously early times.
While many teachers point out the issues in past years with advisory being fourth hour, the negatives simply don’t outweigh the positives. Some teachers cited issues about epidemics of skipping class to take all three lunches, while others said that having B lunch in the middle interrupted test retakes and makeups.
These issues are theoretically simple to solve; however, rather than making an effort to fix the issues and enforce the rules, BHS has decided to isolate and confuse its students. The problems, which could have been solved by cracking down on the supposedly mandatory system of emailing teachers and balancing lunches, were too much to handle.
Taking into account the previously cited problems, there still doesn’t seem to be enough to completely muddle up the schedule, so much so that students are mentally exhausted by the end of the day. To state it briefly, the new advisory schedule is disruptive, and should, at any possibility, be returned to the previous schedule.
