Inklings nov 2015

Page 1

ink L

I

N

G

S

180 Crown Point High School @InklingsCPHS Nov. 30, 2015 Vol. 80 Issue 3

SCHEDULING CPHS

LCHS

Start Aug. 20

Two day Fall Break

Start July 29

Two day Fall Break

Finals after Winter Break

Two week Fall Break

Finals before Winter Break

Finals before Winter Break

Two week Spring Break

One week Spring Break

One week Spring Break

End May 20

End June 1

End May 27

SCHOOL DAYS 213 students voted for which school’s schedule they would prefer

10%

68%

22%

PREFER

PREFER

PREFER

summer

summer

summer

LAKE CENTRAL

FLOYD CENTRAL

End of school year

Time spent on break

Time spent in school

Start of school year

CROWN POINT

CPHS annual fall play “Fools” takes center stage on page 3

Many factors considered in selecting school calendar

FCHS

Start Aug. 12

PHOTO BY OLIVIA TODD

BY MARIA LEONTARAS & MAISA NOUR arts-&-entertainment editor editor-at-large

Finding the perfect calendar to accommodate student and teacher needs can cause controversy. While there may be better methods to arranging the school calendar, the benefits they bring can be a little hazy with no research to back it up. With the rising changes at Crown Point High School, a change that could be considered is the balanced schedule. Students would undergo year round schooling with two-week breaks strategically placed at the end of every nine weeks. The Crown Point district has yet to formally consider adopting an entirely new schedule. Director of Curriculum and Instruction Jim Hardman believes that without solid evidence to support the change, it would not benefit those apart of the school system. “Whether you have a balanced schedule or not, we still need to be working within 180 days. From what research says, there is no substantial difference in education when comparing the traditional calendar to the balanced calendar because the real impact is what happens in the classroom in those 180 days,” Hardman said. “We have not formally considered it. We have looked at it from a research standpoint because we wanted to see if there really are benefits to having a balanced calendar for students and learning.” Though there is no solid evidence to prove whether or not the balanced schedule would work, department chair and math teacher Ryan Collier believes that adopting such a calendar would not have a great effect on student learning but would increase the amount of forgetfulness in students. “Students go away on summer break, and all their skills decay and they forget everything. They come back, and my gut tells me that we’d still experience that if we were to adopt the balanced schedule,” Collier said. “If you leave for fall break for two weeks or three weeks, you’d hear the same complaints that we hear around the final exams being the two weeks right after winter break. You would just experience that two or three more times over

Feature

News Less stress Jamie Monday launches relief groups for students page 2

the course of the year.” For junior Rachyl Adams, taking on the balanced calendar would be straining and take away from the summer which is helpful to all students after the strenuous year. “No, because summer is such a tradition. It would be weird not having the three-month break to look forward to,” Adams said. “Going to school for nine months straight with short breaks is exhausting and mentally draining, but when summer comes around, I feel refreshed.” For Floyd Central English and journalism teacher Jim Lang, being a part of a truly balanced schedule with year round schooling and two-week breaks throughout the year, he believes that keeping summer vacation longer would be more beneficial for students and teachers. “Obviously, I enjoy the longer breaks at the time. However, honestly, I prefer the more traditional schedule we were on previously,” Lang said. While Adams and Lang believe that the schedule change would be something that will alter tradition, Spanish teacher Jennifer Magallanes believes that taking on a balanced schedule would actually help student learning. “It might be a disadvantage to schedules for the teachers and schedules for parents, but for the student, I think it’s a huge benefit. Think about summer time- very long. You’re expecting students to remember things from the previous year when they’ve had a very long summer break in between,” Magallanes said. “Whereas if you shorten that and you have longer breaks in between, there’s a steady practice of the things learned, and I think that they would retain a lot more with that type of schedule than the other. I think it definitely will be of a greater benefit academically for students than the normal traditional calendar schedule.” The unsupported benefits are challenged when the schedule is put in place and experienced by a community on a daily basis such as Floyd Central. See Scheduling on page 3

A&E

Tweet Master Students compete to master the art of Twitter

page

7

Mockingjay - Part 2 Mockingjay expectations crash and burn page

14


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
Inklings nov 2015 by CPHS Inklings - Issuu