Every day to close out school, the students of Yutan High School have a 30-minute period called Chieftain Time where they can work on homework, missing work and makeup work with the exception of Mondays, which are blocked off for SEL lessons. However, this year there was a change that restricts students from leaving on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the exception of going to the restroom, which the administration hoped would help students focus on their homework more. This, however, is a schedule change that I think is more harmful towards a student’s academics than helpful.
First of all, this disadvantages busy students. As a student at Yutan, I try to be involved in different things like volleyball, Teammates, Chieftain Buddies, FBLA and journalism, but because of this new schedule change, I find it hard to fit time into my week to be able to do all of these activities. This year, specifically, I had to stop doing Chieftain Buddies, which is only offered on Wednesdays and Friday, to be able to fit every other activity into my schedule throughout the week. With Monday being blocked off for SEL lessons and my Teammates, a one-on-one mentoring organization, being scheduled on Wednesdays, that leaves me with only Friday to be able to get help from teachers or go to the journalism lab to finish up some work, which just isn’t enough time.
On the subject of journalism, this rule particularly disadvantages journalism students. Journalism can take up a lot of extra time outside of class, and one main struggle I find is that a lot of the work I do in that class can only be accessed from the school computers. Even though we use the computers during our journalism class time, that just isn’t enough time. Having only one available day a week to go to the journalism lab during Chieftain Time makes it hard to be able to finish work on time. One of the main projects that can only be accessed from the school computers are our broadcasts. As a journalism student, filming, cutting clips and editing the videos takes a lot of time, and being restricted to staying in our Chieftain Time limited the opportunity for me to work on my broadcast.
Another aspect of journalism is taking photos, uploading and sorting them. Well, in journalism, there is a specific way we must organize our photos to ensure that the journalism server stays neat and easily accessible when we need photos. This process of organizing is time-consuming because first we must upload photos, and it can take a while depending on the number of photos we took. Then we must rename the photos so they are easy to find when we start creating the yearbook. Finally, we go through every single photo we took and put tags on the ones we think are good. Some of the students in journalism take 500-1,000 photos per game, and normally, class time is used for our stories and the yearbook, so finding time outside of class can be challenging.
Not only do journalism students have this struggle, but with the amount of sickness going around, it can be hard for any student to get caught up on work during Chieftain Time because of this new rule. Not only do journalism students have this struggle, but with the amount of sickness going around, it can be hard for any student to get caught up on work during Chieftain Time because of this new rule. For example, I had missed three days of school because of illness and had to make up three tests and one quiz on top of a bunch of notes and assignments in just the one day I had free in Chieftain Time. Missing even a day can put me back at least two days because of how busy I am after school most days.
A solution I have found to the restricted Chieftain Time changes is coming in before school to work for a little bit, but this solution is limited. Almost every day I come to school early to work on my tasks, but even then there isn’t much time and after school isn’t much better because I have activities. If we have 30 minutes available at the end of every day, we should actually be allowed to go where we need to get caught back up instead of falling behind.
While being able to reach out for help from teachers freely throughout the week during Chieftain Time is nice, some students abuse the privilege by roaming in the halls or going to hang out with friends at a different Chieftain Time. Hardworking students shouldn’t have to be punished as a result of some kids misusing Chieftain Time. Instead of outlawing them from leaving, students should be required to have a pass from a teacher to leave, and there should be harder punishments implemented for the students who abuse Chieftain Time. Instead of limiting everybody from leaving Chieftain Time, there should be a system that restricts the kids who actually abuse chieftain time.
The intention of having Chieftain Time is to allow students to get work done in class, but when the work that needs to be done can only be finished from other places inside the school, we are preventing students from getting their work done when we restrict where they can go.
