Conifer Day or Nay
On Friday, November 5th, CHS followed a Conifer Day schedule.
The Conifer Day schedule was seen written on many teachers boards as a reminder for students to the new times and classes.
Conifer Days are irregular schedule days that are usually scheduled because of an event interfering with school hours. Friday’s Conifer Day was originally scheduled for students not participating in Diversity Day, however Diversity Day was cancelled and all students were required to participate.
“It would have been too much of a disruption to change it to a green day because then it would throw all the other days off and teachers already have those planned out,” Principal Wesley Paxton said.
Diversity Day, originally scheduled for November 5th, was set up so that students who weren’t participating would go through a Conifer Day and other students taking part in the event would not miss any major instructional time. School schedules are planned ahead of the school year and teachers plan their curriculum accordingly. Changing the Conifer Day to a regular Green Day would have caused the rest of the semester’s schedule to change as well, disrupting teachers’ planned curriculum.
These schedule changes mean that students go through periods one through eight in one school day. Classes are shortened to 45 minutes, decreasing instruction time for teachers by over half the usual amount.
“It’s mostly bad for learning. It’s very difficult to have an effective 45 minute lesson and kids are just not used to it,” English teacher Joshua Nielson said.
Students also felt the struggle of moving between so many classes. Because teachers had such little time for each class many lessons were reduced to notes, short activities, work time, and games.
“It didn’t feel like we had enough time for anything and then we were always moving around,” sophomore Oscar Yaun said.
Chemistry teacher Melissa Bartt, has different classrooms for silver and green days, one being on the bottom floor and the other on the top floor. This meant constant movement between each period, making getting to classes on time difficult.
“I am one of the few teachers that doesn’t have their own classroom. So, I went up and down stairs every other period, from room 11 to room 230,” Bartt said.
