The Aliso Niguel High School staff have come up with a new and improved bell schedule for students this year. Teachers and students are adjusting to new changes again for the fourth year in a row due to the continuous alterations made every year to the schedule to improve Wolverines’ time management with their workload.
The staff hopes to see changes in students’ learning habits through these minor tweaks made to the bell schedule. This year, lunch and class periods have been slightly shortened to add Wolverine + permanently on Mondays, and the Wolverine + duration has been increased from 27 minutes to 40 minutes.
“We didn’t think Wolverine + was long enough to truly help students,” Ms. Hokama, a teacher that helped establish the new bell schedule, states,“Our last schedule did not provide enough time to help students or to let them make something up if they were absent.”
The whole idea of Wolverine + in the first place was for students to make up tests or missing assignments, catch up on homework and get extra help from teachers if needed, but teachers found that 27 minutes was not enough for them to completely finish, which defeated the purpose.
Camila Abarca (10) also says, “I appreciate our longer Wolverine+ because I can finish whatever I was doing in the last class and I can get started on my homework instead of worrying about it when I get home.”
The extra 13 minutes adds a big difference for students, and even though it has only been four weeks since the school year has began, many students feel more at ease knowing that they have some time during Wolverine + to get work done which they might have not been able to do at home due to other classes or extracurriculars.
“I also enjoy how we can schedule ourselves on Enriching Students the morning of, so that you can accommodate your schedule depending on the workload you get for that week and what you didn’t understand fully in class. I can get help as quickly as possible this way,” Abarca adds.
In addition to the longer Wolverine + time during block period days, 15 minutes of Wolverine + was also added on Mondays so that students have a time period during school which they can schedule their upcoming tutorials in. To make this happen, late start Mondays now start from 9:10 instead of 9:15.
Student’s are completely responsible for scheduling themselves on time, and if they do not schedule themselves, they will receive consequences from the school. Additionally, teachers are not permitted to change a students’ schedule for Wolverine + after the self schedule timing is up. This provides students to manage their time wisely and choose classes to go to during Wolverine + that will efficiently serve them and their academics.
Each passing year lets the school staff observe what ways the schedule can change to be more effective to the students at ANHS. As teachers and students are just starting of the 2023-2024 school year, the staff will hopefully see a greater refinement in the time and work management of their students.
