Yes- Emily Eichberg, Commons Editor
How well someone does in a class and how enjoyable a class is greatly depends on the teacher and what period they have the class. Getting a new schedule can be exciting and nauseating all in one. On the one hand, leaving a teacher with whom you had a great relationship with can be dreadful, but, being stuck in a class with a teacher who read off Powerpoints everyday can be even worse. Switching things up means no longer hating English class because your teacher isn’t helpful outside of the classroom, and it also means no longer having to wake up to math first period everyday.
One of the better things about coming back to school in the fall is finding out which friends share classes with you and which of the rumored “tough” teachers you have and don’t have. “I like switching classes but it depends because if I have a teacher that I really hate or really hates me, I love switching out after the semester but if I like them then it’s really annoying,” junior Jesse Lotenberg said.
By the time it is half way through the school year, students are accustomed to most if not all of their teacher’s teaching styles. They know if they use Google Classroom religiously, whether or not they check homework every day and if they are a difficult grader. By placing students in new classroom settings, with new surroundings and new teaching styles, it allows for better opportunities to learn things, new or old, in ways they aren’t used to seeing every day, and from a new perspective. “I do really like moving schedules because some of my first semester teachers didn’t really teach well so I couldn’t to understand everything that well but now I do,” sophomore Amber Morales-Sheldon said.
Being in class with four or five friends versus being in class with nobody you know can have a bigger impact than students realize. Friends can affect how much work and study actually gets done during the school day. If you are by yourself for the second part of the year, you may be able to gets more work done, and if you struggled first semester, maybe your grade will improve the other half of the year due to less distractions where you will be able to focus a lot better. “I really like new schedules cause while I’m getting new teachers I am also getting new friends in all of my classes,” Morales-Sheldon said.
For teachers, getting a whole new group of students can be good or bad, “I do really like it because it provides freshness for the groupings that you see in classrooms and students can get fresh perspective,” biology teacher David Bitler said.
Getting a new schedule can be bittersweet because teachers have gotten to know their students so well, but sending them to other teachers allows for them to get an alternative perspective on the material.
No- Dennis Child, Opinion Editor
The first semester has come to an end and students have moved on to new schedules with altered teachers and classmates. Students are assigned new schedules because some one-semester classes, such as health, end after first semester. Counselors also attempt to switch around students schedules so they are not exactly the same all year. “We should have the same classes all year round and not switch at the end of the first semester,” junior Anne Clampitt said.
When students are put in classes with teachers or students they don’t like, they get used to it by the end of the semester. By switching classes, they are made to go through dealing with a student or teacher once again. Also, if students stayed with one schedule all year long the teachers and counselors would only have to go through all the complaints about schedules one time per year. “I hate how we switch schedules halfway through the year because I always end up with a much worse schedule the second semester,” junior Trey Wilson said.
Another reason why we should not switch classes halfway through the year is because counselors don’t always switch teachers for students. They are not supposed to switch students’ classes even if a student wants to switch because he or she doesn’t like the teacher. Some of the nicer/understanding counselors do this anyway and makes it unfair for students with counselors who don’t switch students’ classes. “We would love to grant you guys the exact schedules you want but it is just impossible,” Counselor Jennifer Taylor said. “We don’t create the schedule it is all done by a computer.”
Different teachers have different teaching styles and students get comfortable with their teachers’ way of teaching over the course of the first semester. At the start of the second semester, when students switch teachers, they have to find out how to learn with different teachers’ styles. “The main thing that I don’t like about switching teachers is that every teacher has a different way of teaching and it takes a while to get used to it,” Clampitt said.
Switching teachers in AP classes can be detrimental to a student’s learning. It is important that students learn all of the information in AP classes and switching teachers can throw one’s learning off track. “Especially in an AP course the continuity of having the same teacher is really helpful,” Taylor said.
Of course, there are students who switch into a different subject after first semester, but this should not affect everyone’s schedules. The school needs to strive to make sure that as many students as possible are left with unchanged schedules at the start of second semester. There is only a need to switch the classes for students who need to be switched because they are no longer being taken. “There is no need for these schedules to completely switch because usually students are taking no more than one or two different classes,” sophomore Nate Gilkey said.
