On Feb. 6, students were gifted an extra two hours of sleep due to harsh weather conditions in the morning. Upon arriving at school, they were confronted with the realization that despite the major time loss, administration did not reschedule the homeroom report card distribution set for that day. The combination of homeroom and a two hour delay left only 29 minutes in each class period and lunch cut in half. With the limited time in the school day, students were forced to waste 20 minutes in homeroom, just to receive a paper copy of their semester grades, which were already published in StudentVUE.
WJ prides itself on valuing wellness. In recent years, they boosted lunch from 45 minutes to a full hour. This came with a bounty of benefits, such as plenty of time for students to get help from teachers, participate in clubs, socialize with friends and most importantly, eat lunch. But it seems like the administration takes every opportunity they can to cut it down. Whenever there is a homeroom interruption, the frustration from the student body is apparent. Criticisms range from the confusing shift in class times and order, the shortened lunch and the 20 minutes of wasted time for seemingly irrelevant reasons. With all this in mind, we are prompted to question the benefits of homeroom.
A homeroom schedule can be put in place for a variety of reasons, such as to receive important documents or announcements. These things are necessary, but that doesn’t mean homeroom is the only way to deliver them to the student body. To avoid losing lunch and instructional time, a possible solution would be to deliver the documents to students in their English class. It can be argued that this would lead to some people not receiving the document if they take their English class in another facility. However, the number of students this applies to is small, and if this is the case they may be able to receive their documents from their counselor or in another class.
The benefit of this system is that it is guaranteed that more students will receive their transcripts and important documents because of another inherent flaw of homeroom: students will skip it. A class period where no content is introduced, no strong relationship with the teacher is built and no grade is to be given is, in the mind of the student, code for optional attendance. Even for chronic skippers, they will eventually show up to their English class where their teacher can hand them the documents and information they missed. For all the fuss about chronic absenteeism, skipping homeroom is barely brought up. Homeroom is likely the most skipped class, but it’s a class deemed less important, so no countermeasures are brought up. Is it really important enough to cut lunch in half, but not important enough to care about attendance?
Homeroom is a classic part of highschool culture, but when it hurts student wellness it’s not worth keeping around. A lot can be done in an extra 20 minutes of lunch and it is in the schools best interest to support this time for refueling, relaxing, studying and socializing. Next time you find yourself sitting in silence in your homeroom class, consider this: does administration really appreciate your time?