Charge-Up time: three words that will make or break your mornings. For some students, it is an extra 25 minutes of learning, reviewing and school. Students with a 74 or above get more of one of the most valuable aspects of our high school lives: sleep. On paper, Charge-Up time sounded like an ideal way to give students who need help a more individualized learning experience. Two weeks into the program, it doesn’t seem to be fulfilling its original purpose.
Every morning, students are being pushed along in an inefficient frenzy of confusion, essentially herded, to their designated areas. The 8 a.m. bell rings and the madness begins.
Charge-Up time is meant to be an aid to help struggling students grow and learn in their classes. Is Charge-Up time really providing an environment where this growth is possible?
Students are grouped together in Charge-Up sessions no matter the grade or level of their classes. When placing a honors student and college prep student in the same Charge-Up session, how can one expect both to benefit equally? Let alone anyone in an AP class. Instructors can’t be realistically asked to help many different levels of students within a 25 minute period; not effectively anyways. This predicament will continuously leave some unfortunate portion of stu- dents with no help.
Students in Charge-Up time may feel like they are being singled out for their academic struggles. Charge-Up sessions, according to some students, often are a review of past work which typically will not benefit your current grade. Sometimes, students complete work in Charge-Up time that they have already completed in their normal classes. When a student isn’t helped with current information, how can one expect that the student’s grade will improve? This, in a way, traps the struggling student there and wastes their time.
Charge-Up time is promoting a never-ending cycle of struggle and failure for those who get stuck in the trap. In order to improve a students grades you have to assist them in their current studies. What do you expect to achieve by reviewing non-relevant information with someone who is having a hard time to begin with? Simply aim the extra help towards material which will benefit them in the future.
Between 8 and 8:25 our administrators treat us similarly to domestic sheep—we’ re all herded into different “pens” (gym, auditorium, cafeteria and library) depending on what time we arrive. Students are crammed into various places in a disorganized fashion against our will. We earn passing grades and they thank us by shoving us into the cafeteria or, if you have the option, you can always go hide in the McDonald’s parking lot. Is there really any harm in giving students freedom to enter the library after 8 a.m.?
Unfortunately for underclassmen, the majority don’t have a license so they get here whenever their ride, be it bus or car, arrives. If they were to get to school five minutes after 8 a.m., one becomes stuck in the humid, crowded gym, filled with the deafening echoes
of fellow students voices. There is no possible way to complete homework in such a chaotic place. Even more painful to think about is had that person been five minutes earlier, arriving at or before 8 a.m. they are allowed access to a place like the library, where studying is easy and peaceful.
At 8:32 class begins; and if you’re late you get a tardy. That is necessary. We can’t have students arriving whenever they want but when you’re essentially getting there early for a study hall why can’t you walk down the hall to the library or auditorium, even the cafeteria? Who would this inconvenience?
While Charge-Up time has a genuine purpose, it doesn’t seem to be achieving any of it’s initial intentions.
– Staff Editorial