A Clarke Central High School student visits her Advisement’s Google Classroom page. Advisement, a weekly class taking the place of Glad Time, is being reformatted to meet the needs of students. “I really like the study time kids are gonna have because they don’t have that outside of Advisement,” CCHS science department teacher Marshall Chumley said. Photo by Ana Aldridge.
Glad Time is discontinued as of the 2017-18 school year and has been replaced with a reformatted, weekly Advisement class.
During the 2011-12 school year, Glad Time was implemented at Clarke Central High School. The purpose of the program, which was scheduled most Wednesdays during fourth period, was to give students an opportunity to receive extra support in their classes or pursue interests beyond their classwork.
Despite its long standing, it was announced to students at the start of the 2017-18 school year that Glad Time has been discontinued. Instead, students will attend Advisement every Wednesday during fourth period and will receive a pass/fail grade for their work. CCHS Principal Marie Yuran believes the transition was necessary.
“We looked at if we were really meeting the needs of what we intended Glad Time to be and it really was not meeting that need,” Yuran said. “And so we all came together, there was a group of teachers that studied it, looked at some attendance data, looked at some other things and then decided and made a proposal so we could weave the extra support, remediation, enrichment and also the themes of Advisement all in one thing.”
Class time in Advisement will be divided into three parts: lesson time, academic time and enrichment/team building time.
“I think that Advisement’s gonna be more structured. I’m gonna try to get kids a little bit more involved than I did last year, especially since I’m gonna see (them) more often,” science department teacher Marshall Chumley said.
According to Yuran, based on completion of activities, Advisement will count as a pass/fail course, but will not affect student’s Grade Point Averages.
“You’ll be able to see (a grade for Advisement) in student and Parent Portal like all the other grades. A monthly grade will be posted and then it’ll be a pass or fail, and then a quarter of credit can be earned every year (for Advisement) so that students can come out of high school with an additional elective credit on their transcript,” Yuran said.
According to Chumley, who had a Glad Time devoted to environmental science and board games last year, skipping was a recurrent problem during Glad Time.
“The main issue with Glad Time was skipping. Kids had a really hard time actually showing up to class and you had all these kids in the parking lot and the hallways that made it really hard for us to actually have a good Glad Time,” Chumley said.
Chumley feels that having Advisement every Wednesday is an overall positive change and believes less students will skip.
“I think we’re gonna have an easier time with kids actually coming in Advisement and not skipping, and like I said there will be more structure,” Chumley said. “They’re gonna have time to study and get work done, whereas beforehand they maybe didn’t have as much time to do those kind of things.”
However, junior Patrick Madrid believes that students will skip regardless of the change.
“I feel like skipping is a problem that’s faced in every class and now people are still gonna skip because the grade that we receive at the end of the semester isn’t gonna affect our final (GPA), so it doesn’t affect people’s opinions of skipping,” Madrid said.
Madrid is not happy with the loss of Glad Time, as he feels the program was beneficial to students.
“I don’t like it very much because I feel like when we had Glad Time it gave us a chance to explore something that wasn’t really a part of the curriculum and it gave us more of an opportunity to spend time with our friends outside of class,” Madrid said.
Yuran, on the other hand, says that weekly Advisement will be an opportunity for students to develop life and social skills that they may not gain from other classes.
“I sat with ninth grade parents and they said, ‘When are you guys gonna have time in all of this curricular work that you’re doing to really teach things like how do I keep myself organized? How do I check my calendar? How do I appropriately respond to email?’ Those kinds of things that everyone’s going to need when they leave here,” Yuran said. “(Weekly Advisement) will work on those kinds of things and also then work on kind of learning how to be people. It’s another opportunity for (students) to get to know people that maybe aren’t in (their) normal circle (and) another opportunity for us to grow as a whole family here at (CCHS).”
