This semester, many students have had their year long classes changed in terms of teacher and period placements. This has impacted students’ ability to learn in school, and made it so they have to adjust to new situations twice in the school year, this is especially impactful to kids in AP classes.
When making schedules for the school year, Powerschool sets up a master schedule according to the teachers available to each subject and classes per teacher. Then Powerschool places students into classes based on that master schedule.
“When you have a building with 1700 students, schedules can’t be as clean and neat as you would want them to be,” Curtis Menke says. “In a perfect world every student in a year long class has the same teacher each semester and each period. Part of this also has to do with traveling teachers and elective selections as well.”
Though this may not inherently be a bad thing, it affects every student differently, some students are easy-going with switches like these, while it might be hard on others.
“I have all new teachers,” sophomore Erin Gitchell says. “I’ve loved all of my teachers for the first semester, and I’m really liking my second semester teachers, so I feel like I’m pretty easy going about it. But I could understand how some would be affected more.”
Even if a student requests a schedule change, their counselor might not be able to change their schedule.
“Some of it we have control over and some of it we don’t as it is strictly Powerschool,” Kate Schak says, “once the requests get put into
Powerschool, it does its own scheduling. We try to keep students with the same teacher, but sometimes with semester-long classes, the year-long classes they are taking don’t align to keep them with that teacher.”
“There can also be some benefits to a changed schedule, it gives the students more experience with having to readjust after getting into a routine,” says Menke.
Even if the readjusting is hard it is a necessary part of life to have the ability to adjust to new situations, even if it is difficult.