How would you feel about getting out of school at 3:00? Taking enrichment out of the school schedule would allow a shorter school day for students. Along with getting out at 3:00 students would still be completing their normal classes as usual. 

At Carter High, enrichment class is at the end of the day from 3:00 until 3:30 when students get to go home. At the end of the day, students go to different classes depending on their schedule. For example, on Monday’s students go to their first period class and on Tuesday’s students go to their second period class and so on. From a student’s perspective, senior Aashna Desai explains “In enrichment all we mainly just play on our phones or talk to our friends. You rarely see anyone doing homework because we are all so tired and ready to go home.” If enrichment gets taken out of the school schedule, it will allow students to have more free time after school to do things they need to get done for the day such as: homework, sport practices, and work. Senior Ploomie Messer, one of the band majors and who participates in extracurricular activities, says “It would be nice to get out of school at 3:00 because I usually always have a busy schedule after school.” Most stress in students is caused by school so, if we take enrichment out then students would get extra time to relax and have a break from school. Senior Aashna Desai also explains, “School is just so long and stressful that sometimes I feel like I never get a break.” Most students leave early during the school day because they do not want to stay the whole time but getting rid of enrichment can cause an increase in student attendance rates. If students know they will be going home at 3:00 then it will be less likely to cause them to want to ditch school or get signed out. Some claim enrichment is helpful in some ways by providing extra time to catch up on school work, time to catch up with your friends or to ask your teacher about class/home work but removing it from the school schedule can allow more free time for students, relieves stress, and increase the student attendance rate which would be more beneficial. Enrichment is unnecessary because it causes less free time for students to do extra activities, increases stress, and decreases the student attendance rates.

High School students are regularly stressed and overworked. They have homework from their classes, a job if they’re old enough to, family issues, and extracurricular. Students have so much on their plate and they are not allowed to have a break. Schools in Utah and Oregon have already allowed students in their schools to take off of school for “‘physical or mental illness.” Carter High School students agreed that high school students should be able to take days off for mental health reasons, as long as the students do not abuse the privilege. High school students should be allowed to use mental health issues as an excusable reason to miss school, considering all the stress they are under. Allowing students to use mental health issues or illnesses as an accepted excuse to miss school may help improve the students’ current mental state. A day of rest and additional time to work on homework would really help someone manage the stress from school, work, and life in general. Currently, one in five teenagers have a mental illness of some type and allowing mental health to be used as an excuse to miss school may help the teens. This would also prevent a student from getting burnt out from all the stress. Allowing the student a time of rest would help them avoid this side effect of stress. As a student, I have recently experienced burnout. I was unable to go to school or work for four days. It was caused by the stress from work, marching band, and my classes. Allowing students to take off for mental issues would allow for a cool down time so the student would be ready to work the next day. Their grades would improve and they would miss less school. In addition, allowing students to take off for mental health shows that the school cares for the students’ mental health. Students wouldn’t feel like robots, working until they break. Instead, they would feel human. They would feel cared for in the sense of their mental health. Unfortunately, many people may argue that mental health as an acceptable excuse from school would be too easy to take advantage of. You cannot see a person’s mental health, therefore someone could easily fake a mental illness and use that as an excuse. This can be easily avoided. Using mental health to miss school would not be an unlimited excuse. There would only be a certain number of excusable absences from mental health allowed per semester. This would prevent someone from always missing school due to mental health, unless they are in a mental institute or any other doctoring facility for mental health. This is the perfect solution to the worry of students abusing the privilege of mental health days. Overall, mental health as an excusable absence for students is vital and necessary to help the students in their schooling and mental health.

This school year has been consequently different than previous years due to one obvious reason: COVID-19. With the virus all around us there have been adjustments made for school. For example, students can choose to do online school instead of in person classes. But is this enough? That is where a hybrid school schedule comes into play. 

A hybrid schedule works to where for at least 2 to 3 days a week, students do online school from home, and then go to school in person the rest of the school week. This means that still, roughly 60% of school would be spent in person and the rest being online, which can bring a lot of benefits.One benefit is it gives more of a new and fresh experience. Students can spend certain days at home online; which could also give opportunities to new learning experiences. Then the other days they can go to school and still have that relationship with the community.

In addition to, the most important thing is this could very well be a safer option for students and faculty. For instance, Halls High school had a spike of cases and had to get quarantined for two weeks. So, a hybrid schedule could help keep the school safer. Students and staff won’t be at risk from the virus as often and the days spent online can give custodians extra time to clean the school a little more. Safety and the well being of students is of course the most important thing so this could possibly be a better alternative.

On the other hand, a very big problem is that we are almost three months into the school year so it’s pretty much near impossible to change it, but we always have next semester so it can be something to try out next semester.

In conclusion, a hybrid school schedule is a safer alternative for Carter that should at the very least have a trial run to help keep students safe. This new system can bring a lot of positives to the school year and still keep everyone connected as a community. This may not be something that has to start immediately, but it could definitely be something looked at in the future and tested out.

All around Knox County, students are able to complete all required courses prior to their last year of high school. Carter High School seniors are not given the option to finish their classes that way. They are supposed to complete the required classes per year. For instance, Government and Civics is to be completed Sophomore year and Personal Finance is to be completed Senior year. If students were able to go at their own pace, their motivation to go to college or a trade school may be increased. Although this may be unfitting for some, those who want to get a head start into college or trade school should be able to complete their courses early. Mykala Faucette, a former student from Gibbs, was able to complete all of her senior courses the summer before what was supposed to be her junior year. Faucette was able to get a head start into attending Tennessee School of Beauty (TSB) and is now a successful hairdresser at an Aveda Salon. Students from West High School, like Emma Taggart, are able to complete courses whenever they are ready. Taggart completed her AP U.S History and AP Government in one semester, which means by the time she is a senior, she will have most of her courses completed. Carter High School should consider offering a pathway similar to West High and Gibbs. West High seniors are able to have “free periods” their senior year if they have three or less credits to complete. If Carter High offered a program like this, the success rate of former students would go up. It is proven that if students “take a break” from school, they are likely to either fail, dropout, or not return. The dropout rate of college freshmen is 60%, so, if students could start their college courses early, they are likely to stay in school longer and get a degree. Carter High School should consider allowing students to complete courses at their own rate.

Chris Lane, Carter High School’s new custodian of four months shares a day in his life. He starts his day at 4:30 AM, making his way to the school. The first thing he does is take out all the trash and sweep the floors. Lane then gets started on the bathrooms, cleaning up the previous day’s filth. Once the students start to file in after their routine temperature checks, Lane begins serving breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Afterwards he cleans the lunch tables. Now, Lane does not leave the school until 1:30 PM, so the man is not done yet. He serves the students lunch and aids the other custodians in cleaning up the mess from the hoarde. Once it is 1:30, strictly 1:30, Chris Lane exits the building and heads home “No matter what I’m walking out that door at 1:30.” At first glance all these routines seem like a lot, which it is, but all his hard work pays off (literally). Custodians are given paid holidays, vacations, and sick days. Lane has been a custodian for four years as of right now, working hard in many other schools just like he is Carter.

Wouldn’t a coach that played for many years at a high level be amazing? When she was in high school, Coach Munday played basketball for Farragut High School. She played all four years of high school and started all four of those years (1999-2003). Her sophomore year was the first year she was named captain of her team. She held that title until she graduated her senior year. She has won honors like “All District,” “All Region,” and “All East Tennessee.” On top of all that, she was the KIL player of the year her senior year (2003). She left her high school leaving a major mark by being the All Time Leading Rebounder and All Time Leading Scorer. Her senior year of high school she signed to Samford University located in Birmingham, Alabama. Samford University is a Division 1 school when it comes to their girls basketball team. Coach Munday was the Ohio Valley Conference freshman of the year in the 2003-2004 season. She had multiple All Conference Team honors and was the NCAA Strength and Conditioning All-American. She left her college, the All Time Leading Scorer, and the All Time Leading Rebounder. All this gives her great credibility when she tries to find a coaching position. She decided to go back to Farragut High to coach. She said, “Being able to coach there is like being at home.” All of her players respect her because of what she has accomplished. She said playing basketball is more of getting to know yourself as a player and coaching is helping the players discover themselves and leading them in the right direction.

Mr. Martinez is a well-known teacher at Carter High School. But what a lot of people don’t know about him is that he actually grew up in Germany. 

Martinez grew up in Heidelberg Germany and it turns out that life in Germany isn’t too different from life in America.For Mr. Martinez, he had this to say about life there, ¨It was different. Two different cultures living together, American and German.¨  He recalls Germany being: ¨very unique¨ and ¨a great place to grow¨.

Martinez was born and raised in Germany and moved to America by the time he was 21 years old. He talks about the most noticeable differences between the two different countries,¨There were cultural differences. Like a culture shock. (it) Took me about a year to get used to it¨.

After teaching for so long in America Martinez does say he has thought about teaching at his old high school in Germany.

Mr. Martinez does come in as a big help for a lot of students and especially for Lina Loock, a German foreign exchange student that attended Carter High School in the 2019-20 school year. Lina comments on American teaching being ¨not that different¨ but she does say, ¨I had to adjust to the teachers talking English but I understood a lot after a few weeks¨.

Lina recalls Martinez being a big help for her adjusting to America saying, “Yes, Mr. Martinez for sure made the school environment more comfortable for me. I mean he’s German too. It felt like a part of my home was there since I didn’t get that many chances to talk German in the US. On my first day two girls showed the school to me and we sat in Mr. Martinez’s classroom for about 30 minutes just talking and that was just great.” 

Have you ever wondered how hard it would be to teach several students with multiple classes? Imagine having to do so while being in quarantine for two weeks. English teacher and color guard instructor, Alicia Sharp says “It’s really difficult not to be in the classroom with my students.” When Ms. Sharp is teaching virtually, she says it puts a lot of extra pressure on her more anxious students and makes it harder for them to speak up about something they are just not understanding. “When I’m in the classroom with you guys I can ask a question and engage your understanding based off the faces you make” says Ms. Sharp. You could say Ms. Sharp puts more thought into the environment her students are learning in so they can better understand the material their own way rather than just handing them work when she was in quarantine.

Mrs. Fortenberry, a math teacher at Carter High School, was once a student at our school just like the ones we have now. After graduating in 2006, going to college, and getting a teaching degree, she came back and taught the students at her old high school. She explained that, “It’s kind of different seeing your teachers as your coworkers, but it’s also really cool because it’s the teachers you’ve had.” It might feel strange for a person who was once the student to become the teacher. Mrs. Fortenberry explained that her generation of students looked a little different from our generation. “When I graduated, myspace had just gotten big. Not everyone had phones, we weren’t getting likes on photos, we weren’t constantly communicating with people… You would have to call someone on a phone to talk to them. The main difference is social media.” Myspace is an American social networking system. Back then you couldn’t do nearly as much on it as you can now; it was more of a meet-and-greet chat room network with a few ways to post. It was much less advanced than modern social media. Mrs. Fortenberry also has many good (and funny) memories from her time at Carter. When asked to share one, she said, “So, I was in the marching band, and we were eating lunch in the cafeteria. I slid on some water on the floor, and dumped all of my red powerade on the directors’ papers.” The directors weren’t mad, she added later, claiming that they were pretty calm about it. Mr. Cunningham, a government and civics teacher, used to teach Mrs. Fortenberry when she was a teenager. He said, “She was a good student. She was busy all the time, she always had things to do. She was very much involved.” He also taught many other staff members in Carter, including: Mrs. Burkhart, Mr. McGee, Mrs. Flatford, Mr. Gentry, and Mrs. Chollman.

Paper assignments in class may be going away due to health regulations. This may also be caused by students now all having personal laptops and access to the internet.

Mr. Adamson, a science teacher here at Carter High School, stated “The Chromebooks have mostly been a blessing. There’s a plethora of fantastic online resources for science classrooms, so the Chromebooks enable the use of these resources without displacing the entire class to the computer labs. Additionally, certain research tasks are made simpler when every student has access to the internet.”

Now, due to some students being completely virtual, many teachers put most work assignments and homework online. This reduces person-to-person contact by making it so teachers don’t have to hand out assignments to students and can just do it virtually.

When Mr. Adamson was asked about the circumstance that paper assignments disappear and switch to online, this was his response: “Most elements of classroom operation will be streamlined (like organization, submissions, and grading) with the removal of paper assignments, but that streamlining comes with some costs. I have noticed that a not insignificant portion of my time is spent doing tech support, but I’m hypothesizing that portion will decrease over time. The onus of responsibility has shifted more on the student as well. Before, I had a stash of pencils and paper if a student forgot to bring supplies, but I can’t order a box of Chromebook chargers on amazon prime in case a student forgets to charge their device. This isn’t a bad thing, just something that requires adjustment.”