West Po students are now over three months into the school year, and have become well accustomed to the new advisory S-Rotation system. This year, students now attend two return periods which cycle through students’ schedules starting with period one all the way to period eight.
Assistant Principal Brent Roberson said, “It’s [S-Rotation] supposed to be to allow students to go to their two classes within that period to focus on remediation, test makeup, or any other type of academic support.”
The WP Wire surveyed students throughout the school about their thoughts on the new S-Rotation system. The survey found that 45.7% of students said that S-Rotation didn’t provide them with enough time for support, assignment makeups and retakes.
“I don’t like the current S-Rotation, because we don’t have enough time to do stuff. I sometimes want to go to another teacher’s class to complete work, and I can’t because I’m in a different period,” Sonia Jimenez, junior, said. “Or there is simply not enough time to complete work because we have to switch to another class so soon.”
Meanwhile, 36.2% of students found that they had enough time to complete work during S-Rotation this year.
“I like this current system because it gives every student the opportunity to make up for missing work and assignments. It also allows us to take our missing tests or retakes,” Amna Bilal, senior, said.
Annelise Dehn, senior, said, “The current rotation system gives me time to work on everything I need to do. Also, the class periods are shorter which is less draining.”
When asked which advisory system was their favorite, 77.7% of students said that they preferred Wolverine Student Support Time (WSST). This system allowed students to remain in their advisory classrooms the entire period, unless teachers chose to request certain students if they needed support.
“The advisory with teacher requests [WSST] was my favorite because it didn’t limit which days I could do my retakes or finish up my work, it allowed me to keep a good grade. That schedule was flexible and was especially good when I wasn’t available after school,” Ibtesam Antehun, junior, said.
Charlotte Parker, junior, said, “The only time where students were actually able to improve their academics was when we had teacher requests [WSST]. Especially now since teachers only stay after on Mondays due to the late bus schedules, there’s no time to receive the help you need.”
Interestingly enough, 47% of the total freshman and sophomores surveyed preferred WSST, even though they were not at West Po to experience this system.
Lee Assefa, sophomore, said, “I didn’t personally experience having advisory with teacher requests, but I genuinely think that was, and is, the best method. There are some classes that I just waste time in because I don’t have any work there, but I could be using that time for another specific class that I actually need to do things in.”
“I haven’t experienced another advisory system at West Po, but I heard about the teacher request system. That sounds the best, because you have enough time to do work if you need to,” Samantha Mecartney, freshman, said. “Plus, advisory can be a study-period too.”
Meanwhile, only 8.5% of students find the current S-Rotation as their favorite advisory system.
“I do like S-Rotations because La Liga is during them. It makes things easier for me because a lot of my activities are already after school,” Katarina Beatty, senior, said.
For three years the advisory system at West Po has not been consistent. First it was WSST, then it was advisory with one return period and now S-Return which consists of two return periods.
Roberson acknowledges this fault, noting, “It takes three years for something to really be effective. That’s bad planning on our part, because we should stick with something for three years, so I apologize.”
He continued to say, “I’m going to advocate for the current advisory system to remain, we shouldn’t change come next year.”
