During the month of February,  guidance counselors met with students during English classes in the science commons. For the first time, the students went to the guidance counselors instead of them coming to the students during English. 

Why the change was made

The change in the scheduling process was made this year for a variety of reasons, but was mainly for the ease of the counselors. 

“We had to change even a little bit how we did it last year because of changes in our department. Two years ago, we did two counselors per grade level to schedule, then we added ninth grade. And we decided it would be better for students to split by alphabetical order, so their counselor could have a better hold on all four years of high school activity,” Counselor Elieen Starr said. “We were going to make changes last year, but we were hindered by virtual and had to make a virtual plan.”

Starr’s opinion

Starr states that she enjoys the change in scheduling and hopes to continue the new way of scheduling into future years.

“There are things we wish could have been a little bit better; it could be chaotic at times. The noise could get out of hand at some points. However, we always have to look at the flip side; we knew it wasn’t effective for eight of us (guidance counselors) to move from room to room for scheduling. I do enjoy doing it this way, and I believe it is how we are going to do things moving forward,” Starr said.

The guidance counselors want this process to be as easy and confusion free as possible; they will constantly try to perfect their scheduling process for the comfort of students.

“I think we need to keep looking at how we do scheduling. Some students came to those meetings pretty well prepared. They had thoughts and ideas about what they wanted to schedule; while other students were very unprepared and had a very difficult time. While I am a fan of this system, I think our whole department is always kind of thinking how we can do this a little better,” Starr said.

This system of scheduling is new not only to the students but to the guidance counselors as well, and they are always looking for ways to improve.

“It was interesting going from all the meetings we had to the new system and we were all thinking, ‘What’s this going to look like?’ We were worried about things we may not have considered, but I think it went really really well. I was able to see sometimes when I had a couple of students at my table, one could say something about a class they enjoyed, and I noticed other students considered it which was interesting,” Starr said. 

Student opinion

Some students are concerned about safety this year with the new process bunching the students all together. 

“Personally I believe that when we all gather up it becomes a much more dangerous scenario. With all that’s going on in this world like school shootings, COVID-19, and the many fights we’ve had at this school, removing the part of the day where we are all bunched up is better. This ties into the problems that students complain about every day,” junior Tristan Socie said.

Some students look at the pros and cons of the new scheduling process.

“This year I felt that although it was chaotic I felt it was more efficient. A con is that we didn’t have a lot of time, and it was hard for counselors to answer everyone’s questions. Previously we sat down individually and asked about what we wanted to do. This year we got to sit and talk with others about what we wanted to do which I felt was helpful to be able to discuss with friends about classes. Overall, I personally like it better by having many people do it all at once,” junior Delaney Imler said.