“Man I just want my schedule changed. What's taking these counselors so long?”
Every student who has ever wanted something done to their schedule has said this. Curious to why the counselors took so long, I headed up to the office to ask, “What’s up with the slow changes? I talked to Mr. Do, one of the five counselors.
Q: How are you feeling with all the schedule changes happening?
A: “I think it's unfair for all the changes happening to the students. They might fall behind when we take them out from a class they got used to and place them in a new environment because all teachers teach differently. Some teachers may be ahead and they need to work a lot to catch up. I guess to say it disrupts the school year. It has to happen because we need to balance, close, or open new classes.”
Q: How are you managing? How many hours do you work a day? Are you feeling stressed still?
A: “It can be stressful and frustrating because sometimes we can’t find new students to change classes or put into these new classes and I feel really bad taking kids out of classes and messing up their schedule. I'm working around 8 to 9 hours a day to change schedules. It's really hectic the first month or so then it becomes smoother.
One thing that students don’t realize is if even if we don’t have to, we have to balance schedules. We don’t have to balance schedules.”
Q: How do you feel about the massive increase in students this year?
A: "It’s a good problem really, the more students we have means that people want to go to our school and that we have a good reputation. It's hard to meet every single student’s need, but I try my very best to. Thankfully we have enough teachers and we balanced their workload. If we were to get a new teacher she would be an English teacher because some of them teach 6 periods."
Q: How are you feeling with all the schedule changes happening?
A: “I think it's unfair for all the changes happening to the students. They might fall behind when we take them out from a class they got used to and place them in a new environment because all teachers teach differently. Some teachers may be ahead and they need to work a lot to catch up. I guess to say it disrupts the school year. It has to happen because we need to balance, close, or open new classes.”
Q: How are you managing? How many hours do you work a day? Are you feeling stressed still?
A: “It can be stressful and frustrating because sometimes we can’t find new students to change classes or put into these new classes and I feel really bad taking kids out of classes and messing up their schedule. I'm working around 8 to 9 hours a day to change schedules. It's really hectic the first month or so then it becomes smoother.
One thing that students don’t realize is if even if we don’t have to, we have to balance schedules. We don’t have to balance schedules.”
Q: How do you feel about the massive increase in students this year?
A: "It’s a good problem really, the more students we have means that people want to go to our school and that we have a good reputation. It's hard to meet every single student’s need, but I try my very best to. Thankfully we have enough teachers and we balanced their workload. If we were to get a new teacher she would be an English teacher because some of them teach 6 periods."
Q: Why does it take so long to get your schedule changed?
A: "Due to the increase in enrollment we had to open, close, and balance the classes before we could do anything else. Also due to the large amount of participants in summer school we had to make adjustments. For example, a lot of students took Math 1 over the summer to skip to Math 2. So we had to cut some Math 1 classes than open up some new Math 2 classes and put the students who passed math 1 to math 2. Its not like I don’t read the requests I do and I try my best to accommodate for all students. Everything was backed up this year so changing schedules took a little longer."
Q: How do you feel about students and dropping AP classes?
A: “Students fail to realize the massive workload and that they sign up for the class not the teacher. They get scared because of the “hard” teacher. I understand that each teacher is different and each student learns differently but still if they sign up they should want to learn from the class.”
The counselors are working hard to do their jobs and satisfy the students need. It's a lot of work and stress, so as students we should take it easy and stop bashing them.
A: "Due to the increase in enrollment we had to open, close, and balance the classes before we could do anything else. Also due to the large amount of participants in summer school we had to make adjustments. For example, a lot of students took Math 1 over the summer to skip to Math 2. So we had to cut some Math 1 classes than open up some new Math 2 classes and put the students who passed math 1 to math 2. Its not like I don’t read the requests I do and I try my best to accommodate for all students. Everything was backed up this year so changing schedules took a little longer."
Q: How do you feel about students and dropping AP classes?
A: “Students fail to realize the massive workload and that they sign up for the class not the teacher. They get scared because of the “hard” teacher. I understand that each teacher is different and each student learns differently but still if they sign up they should want to learn from the class.”
The counselors are working hard to do their jobs and satisfy the students need. It's a lot of work and stress, so as students we should take it easy and stop bashing them.