Every Wednesday, students ask around to find out what class has a wellness period this week. Those who have a test the following period sigh with relief, as do those who didn’t have a good night’s sleep. But to their surprise, as soon as they walk into the classroom, they discover their teacher has decided to skip wellness that day. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, as it adversely affects students at WJ.
“Teachers shouldn’t skip wellness periods,” freshman Harriet Johnson said. “Sometimes you have after school activities or sports and you don’t have time to do things after school, so I feel like we need wellness periods.”
Wellness periods are beneficial for students and teachers alike, being the perfect time to study, finish missing work, or plan for future lessons.
“Sometimes it’s really overwhelming to have all the classes every day, so I think wellness periods are really helpful,” senior María Valencia said. “I start upcoming assignments I have. It’s useful for me because I’m taking a lot of hard classes.”
Teachers generally respect wildcat paws, the official title of wellness periods, but that’s not always the case.
At times, teachers skip wellness periods by claiming they were unaware of it. While skipping them every now and then in the name of forging ahead in a class is understandable, they aren’t able to justify it under the excuse that they weren’t informed. This is because teachers have access to a staff calendar, in which all future Wildcat Wellness for their departments are scheduled.
While old Wildcat Wednesdays, where teachers weren’t allowed to introduce new material, were much more hindersome, some teachers still find this new system problematic. However, they fail to recognize that they could also use Wildcat Paws for their benefit.
“Everybody benefits from having 45 minutes to get things done,” math teacher Terri Bullock said.
Another ongoing debate regarding Wildcat Paws is whether or not phone use should be allowed during wellness periods. Unsurprisingly, students and teachers often disagree on this topic.
“Phones should be allowed in wellness periods because they’re not hurting anybody. As long as they’re not playing music out loud or playing videos out loud,” junior Mateo Playuk said.
On the other hand, because Wildcat Paws were created to provide students with time to catch up with their classes and work on whatever they need to, some teachers feel as though the usage of phones defeats the purpose.
“My students cannot have their phones out even during wellness, because they need to be doing something productive. They can have their computers out to work, but not their phones,” world languages teacher Maria Cavallini said.
Although students and teachers differ in what they believe wellness periods’ rules should be, most can concur that both parties benefit from having Wildcat Paws. The fewer wellness periods teachers skip, the more students can use that time to ensure they stay on track and ask for help in whatever areas they are struggling with, which might not be possible otherwise without Wildcat Paws.
