Era of Excellence; Pro
Principal Cody Japinga has decided to add an hour-long seminar period every Monday, with two 25-minute sessions for students to work with teachers. This offers students the perfect opportunity for help from teachers — especially those who have extracurricular or conflicting activities after school.
This additional hour has given students extra time during the school day to work on any homework or class they may be struggling with. This is a huge way to benefit our entire school and improve grades schoolwide.
Seminar also allows students to meet and communicate with students that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. The class is organized by graduating class, granting students something in common to connect over.
Another benefit of the Seminar hour is to help students gain an understanding of their future. Homeroom lessons are continued as they were last school year, and seminars allow them to be more personal depending on grade. This means that students will feel better prepared after high school and have a stronger plan for their futures.
During the busyness of high school, the current seminar period is proving to make a huge impact on the lives and schedules of students. It gives students extra time and support for their classwork, as well as generating strong skills like time management and work ethic for success after high school.
The Problem with Seminar: More Talk, Less Value; Con
Some people may think that seminar is great and beneficial, but not all the time. Seminar can take away time from other core classes that are required for students to graduate. Not having enough time in class to do something that you need to by adding a seminar one time out of the week can harm a lot of people.
Not only that, there are waves within seminars and sometimes the kids that are needed to complete missing work don’t show up. Many students sit in their seminar classes doing nothing which isn’t benefiting anyone. Seminar may seem like an inconvenience to others as they are forced in a class to do rushed work rather than it being at their pace.
Seminar can be helpful with getting missing work done but it also sets back the primary classes with only 44 minutes in each class when students may need the full hour. Principal Cody Japinga stated that seminars can also help for SAT preparation. Which may be a little fast pace knowing that SAT is not until April.
Though the seminar is great it has its cons when it comes to helping students. Some students may feel forced when having to sit in a class and learn about a lesson that’s not beneficial to them, they may be covering too much material at once and focusing on certain things that aren’t interesting to that specific group of students which can lead to less engagement in the classroom.