Managing six classes and a teenage life can get overwhelming and crazy, and next year students will have to adjust to more work with a seven-class day.
The student schedule at LHS is set to expand by one class although seminar will be eliminated. In addition, there will also be an option for eight classes when a student takes a zero hour.
Having seven regular classes each day will give students more opportunities to take the classes they want. At the junior high schools, students have been able to take up to eight or nine classes, but with freshmen coming to the high school next year, they would have only been able to take up to 24 total without a change — just one more than the required number. Now with seven classes, students will be able to take more.
“It will help with electives, giving students more of an opportunity for more electives,”said English teacher Kim O’Brien. “It will help struggling students, give them opportunities to retake classes for whatever reason.”
Junior Jackie Long said more chances to take electives will benefit students.
“[It will make] more electives available for students who want to graduate early,” Long said.
Unlike Long and O’Brien, sophomore Kharon Brown said the move to seven classes isn’t necessary.
“I don’t know what I would do with an extra class,” Brown said.
While sophomore Frances Berghout agrees more electives are good, she said an important gain is shorter class periods. Each class will need to be shortened in order to meet the dismissal time of 3:05. With shorter classes, Berghout said, “if you don’t like a class, it’ll go faster.” But, O’Brien said shorter classes will mean less time to work.
“Decreased instructional time will mean more homework in each class,” O’Brien said, “and there will be more classes to give homework.”
This blow of extra homework will hit students especially hard with the elimination of seminar. The new schedule will still include late arrival. Because of the now odd number of classes, Wednesday will include hours two, four and six, and Thursday will have hours one, three, five and seven.
“One of those hours will basically take the place of seminar,” assistant principal Mike Norris said.
But some just simply don’t like the idea of not having a seminar.
“No seminar sucks,” Long said blatantly.
Unlike some people in school, chemistry and physics teacher Tim Kuhlman thinks the change is a good one. While most have focused on the decreased instructional time, Kuhlman is focused on the change creating smaller class sizes, which will give students more chances for one-on-one work time.
“Weighing the pros and cons, it was a good choice,” Kuhlman said.
