As the vibrant autumn leaves fall to the ground in the early months of the 2024 school year, the topic of responsive scheduling remains at the forefront of conversation for students and teachers. They have differing opinions on the process, impacting how they spend their time on Thursday each week.
At the start of the year, a new method was introduced to revise homeroom scheduling. In previous years, students could stay in their designated homeroom, but teachers could request students they needed to meet via EHallPass whenever they wanted. Now, students must select which homerooms they want to go to days in advance and for specific blocks of time. The deadline to pick a homeroom is Wednesday night, and if a student doesn’t meet this they will be randomly assigned to any teacher in the school.
Dr. Seth Harrell, principal at KHS, decided to establish responsive scheduling because of an already built-in system in Infinite Campus. He shares about this, and how it proves to be a better system than the prior EHallPass.
“[I] wanted to look at having a more structured process for homeroom, and how and where students are during that period,” Harrell said. “We’ve used EHallPass in the past, but we wanted to look at something that’s in Infinite Campus because we had a tool [that could be] better utilized. [We wanted to] create an opportunity where students just sign up for where they’re going to be for that next homeroom. It’s to help better structure that academic support time for students that need it.”
Another facet of responsive scheduling is the random assignment of students to any teacher in the school. After the clock hits midnight on Wednesday, students will be assigned to a random teacher for the second and third blocks. That is, if they didn’t select anything or if the class they selected was full.
“Any student on this campus should be able to go to any classroom or with any teacher and feel that they belong in that class,” Harrell said. “You may have a student that, quite frankly, doesn’t really feel like there’s a lot of spaces they may belong in. They may end up in a homeroom class and think, ‘I like this, I really like this teacher, I like this class, I feel like I belong here.’ We want to establish a strong community at Kirkwood where all of our students and staff feel like they belong here, they love being here, they’re happy when they come to work or come to school.”
Another group of people affected by responsive scheduling are teachers. Lisa Shinabargar, social studies teacher, shares how responsive scheduling benefits teachers because of the professional development time. This happens every few weeks when teachers can meet with the rest of their department to discuss curriculum or ongoing issues within the staff.
“[Professional development time] is very necessary,” Shinabargar said. “It is nice that we have this designated time a few times a semester where we get an hour of work time and an hour is a good amount of work time to accomplish some of the things we need to do.”
One student’s opinion on the matter is mixed. Julian Brown, sophomore, said his experiences with the system, and how he got lost when trying to find his randomly assigned homeroom. He also states that this new system is beneficial due to its ease of use to select a teacher when he remembers.
“This Thursday I forgot to update my schedule to go to a teacher and I got assigned to a random classroom,” Brown said. “I was almost late to one of them; I didn’t know where I was going and it was really bad. However, I feel like it will [be a] benefit since it’s easier for kids to pick where they’re going.”
Responsive scheduling is a new, experimental feature. It is open for change and improvement, and one example of this would be how the administrator changed the deadline from Tuesday to Wednesday last week.
“[I’m] always looking at how our school is structured,” Harell said. “I’m always looking at what I can do to be more beneficial, be more effective, have a bigger impact, and be more of a positive advantage for our students and staff. So we’re always reevaluating what we’re doing.”
Students also note the administrator’s attempts to revise and improve responsive scheduling. Brown comments on the school’s ability to try a new method for homeroom.
“It’s good that our school is trying to change ways to benefit everyone in the school,” Brown said. “And [that they’re] trying to get responses from us to improve our responsible scheduling.”