Point

By Maddie Waters

There are a handful of differences that separate middle school from high school. Two of these differences are responsibility and freedom. Once you are in high school, you have way more power to choose what you think you need to do. Scheduling yourself to a classroom for I/E time is one of these freedoms.

I do not think you should have to seek out a teacher to schedule yourself to a classroom when you feel you need help. It is your right and your responsibility to schedule yourself. I/E time was created for the students, and the time is theirs and no one else’s. Having to wait to be scheduled by a teacher takes this time from the student. If a student is absent, it is their responsibility to visit a teacher to make up missed work. I do not think they should constantly have to be reminded to schedule or forcibly scheduled by their homeroom teacher. I believe that if a student is not getting their work done, then a teacher may intervene, but it is really the student’s job, not the teacher’s.

I/E time stands for Intervention and Enrichment time, so I understand that the teachers will intervene at their own leisure. Enrichment opportunities are also offered such as study groups organized by teachers to help students better understand the concepts. If the main goal of education is to make students understand these different concepts, it is crucial that students have this opportunity to visit different teachers of their own free will. The students know what they need help on and what they need to get done; therefore, they will feel better if they are able to schedule themselves instead of having to take up their own time explaining to their homeroom teacher why they need to go to a certain room.

Overall, students should have the ability to choose where they would like to visit without having to rely on teachers.

Counterpoint

By Kate Bennett

When starting high school, kids are faced with a series of new responsibilities and expectations set for them by the new learning environment. Teachers count on them to do hours of homework each night, be held accountable for their own studying process, and know for themselves when it’s time to ask for help. With all of these changes already taking place, why should we have to worry about whether or not our I/E time has been scheduled correctly?

By allowing students to schedule their own I/E time, we’re opening ourselves up to a world of new technical difficulties and a constant nagging doubt that our schedules may not have gone through. With all the technological difficulties the school has already experienced this year, who’s to say that this update to the Flexischedule won’t just be another one to add to the list? It’s already bad enough when Infinite Campus breaks down; what will we do when the entire school is unable to plan their clubs and activities for the entire week?

Besides the technical difficulties potentially faced, the new program poses many questions as to how we’ll be scheduled. For instance, when a teacher wants you to come to their classroom, with the current program, the suggestion will show up on your homeroom teacher’s computer, allowing you to pencil in your meeting with confidence. But if we switch our system to allow student scheduling, how will we know when we are requested for meetings? Will the program be able to show us the teacher recommendation, or will we be completely left in the dark, unable to even recognize where we should be?

When we consider changing the way things operate in the school, we must first consider why it needs to be changed. As it stands, we have a fully functional system that allows us to schedule our I/E time without fail. There’s no reason to switch to the new system, risking a complete technological meltdown, just to save a couple steps up to the teacher’s desk.