By MARY WINN GRANUM – Viewpoints Writer
You have 32 minutes stuck in the middle of the day. What will you do with it?
The addition of Glad Time to the daily schedule of Clarke Central High School will be beneficial to students who take advantage of it.
One girl in the back of the room is texting under her desk. A boy a few rows ahead has his head down, nearly asleep against the desk. A couple of students across the room are passing a worksheet back and forth, trying to finish the homework due in their next class.
Unfortunately, this is a common scene in Glad Time. Many Clarke Central High School students are wasting time that has been provided to help them.
For years, CCHS has seen regular schedule changes — including alterations to school day length and the restriction of A/B day scheduling — designed to improve the school’s overall performance, all of which have been short-lived solutions.
The current experiment to solve CCHS’ daily woes is to include Glad Time, a thirty-two minute block of supplementary instructional time between second and third blocks.
The goal of Glad Time is simple: to give students study time or a chance to receive remediation outside of regular class time. If this goal is actually met with real benefits for students, Glad Time can be a very positive thing for CCHS.
“If (a) teacher didn’t stay after school, now (a student) can go in during (Glad Time),” CCHS Principal Dr. Robbie Hooker said. “I think it’s a win-win situation for both the student as well as the teacher.”
Some might think that this addition to the schedule is a waste of time in the school day or that students in need of assistance should arrange a meeting time with teachers before or after school. For the school as a whole, however, Glad Time has the potential to reduce the frequency of one of our school’s major academic problems: poor class grades.
“A lot of (the time), our students here are in need of remediation, but, with this being such an active school with after school activities, students who needed remediation (were) not going,” Assistant Principal Reginald Thomas said.
The students of CCHS have been given a chance to make up for a lack of afterschool academic involvement. This new opportunity, however, can only be effective if it is used to its full advantage.
Glad Time should not turn into another scrapped idea in our school’s trash bin. This new block of time can help CCHS students succeed in their classes, but only if Glad Time is continuously used well.
The students of CCHS need to take advantage of this opportunity. We have half an hour a day set aside for our benefit; let’s not waste it.
