Students tackle scheduling for coming year

It is the time of year when students in both ninth and eighth graders are scheduling their classes for the upcoming year. This year though, both eighth and ninth grade are doing scheduling for classes they will be taking in the new high school.

There are a lot of kids in school, and there are also a lot of views on how comfortable students feel on how they are going to schedule.

“I’m nervous, but its going to be an exciting decision. I’m excited for new classes and  opportunities. We went to an assembly about scheduling so far, but we are going more in depth this week. We will be filling out our scheduling papers with what electives we want to take, and we are going to talk about the CTC,” eighth grader Anara Zabinzky said.

Other students have views on what would make them more comfortable with scheduling.

“I think it would be nice to get some more information on classes you can join next year or more information on how we could work the class we want to take into our schedule that would work best for us,” eighth grader Emeline Feathers said.

Ninth graders who have been working on other things to help pick their career paths have been putting more thought into scheduling classes for what career they want in the future.

“I’m stressed out about scheduling because I’m not really sure what I want to do yet, and I’m not sure if I’m going to end up liking my schedule. I wish they would let us bring the papers home so that I can discuss it with my parents, so I could have a little more guidance on deciding on what I wanted to do,“ ninth grader Vanessa Roman said.

Even though students could not take the papers home, the students will be meeting with adults to discuss the final version of their schedules.

“Eighth and ninth grade students will have the school counselors that will come and meet with them and go over your choices and go over what is going to happen there and then it will be placed in electronically so that high school administration can review the schedule. The same type of thing will occur with seventh grade students as well,” Principal Lori Mangan said.

Students who are moving to the new high school still have some concerns when it comes to finding their classes and way around the new school.

“In the in-service days of August, when teachers start here, we will bring students in for a similar process as to how we would usually introduce students to the school. They will be able to go to their homeroom teacher and have them be there. Tours will still happen of the building for incoming sixth and seventh graders. We are not sure yet if this will take place for the incoming eighth graders as well. The high school then would typically do a transition on the first student days that just was for sophomores. They are going to do this for all students this year, and it will be on those in-service days that teachers are there and it will be a half day type of thing,” principal Mangan said.

As students continue along the path and finalizing their schedules, they consider what classes would be best to take in their coming school year. Some students are still wondering where to get a defined description of the classes that are available to take.

“We made the course booklets available online, and we’re suggesting that folks go that direction because of having Chromebooks and students being able to access them. We did order a small number of hard copy booklets,” principal Mangan said.

The eighth grade course booklet is available online and so is the course booklet for all of the high school courses. If students have questions about their schedules or scheduling they should direct these questions to their guidance counselors.