At the start of last year, counselors were overwhelmed with students coming to them and demanding they be allowed to switch classes, whether it was either too hard or they did not have friends in the class.
This inundation of requests caused counselors to have to change the classes in a student’s schedule to align with the newly desired class. Because of the troubles caused by the mass number of students requesting as well as dropping out of their classes, school officials decided to become more assertive and informative about each student’s class the following year.
The new strategies they instituted include having teachers give private conferences with each of their students to inform them of their recommendation of what class they should take in the upcoming year based upon their current performance in the class. This new process required a teacher to spend a majority of the class period outside and not in contact with the rest of the class, greatly stifling the teacher’s lesson plans for that day.
Along with these meetings school officials greatly emphasized to teachers and students that there would be much stricter policies about switching classes in the next school year.
These new policies made students seriously consider which classes were right for them and choose more wisely so that this dilemma did not happen again.
However, with any school policy there were always problems and exceptions. This year, it seems the school administrators and counselors lightened up on the new rules they claimed to be enforcing. This was evident in the fact that the lines at Spartan Spree this year to meet with the counselors were brimming with students eager to change their schedule, along with the willingness of most of the counselors to switch a student’s class upon their request. As it has become obvious, the school officials are not enforcing the new rules they supposedly put into place last year in order to reduce the amount of students who transfer classes. This should come as a relief to most students because no matter how sure they are about the classes they plan to take, they cannot overcome the last minute fears and concerns brought upon by a new year of school. While the idea of these new policies is meant to help the students and counselors, the administrator’s lack of enforcement undermines their authority as a whole and defeats the purpose of advocating such policies.