As an introduction to the second semester, we had a re-orientation day. Teachers and advisors hyped it up, saying that it will fill us in with important information for the upcoming semester and also feature a civic lab workday.
Initially, when I was told this, I assumed that the entire day would be centered around re-orientation and be filled with helpful information that would guide me through my first second semester of high school. I was anticipating talk of how to maintain good academic habits or help build new ones, how to utilize the free time we are given, or maybe some of the notable things that will occur this semester. None of this was talked about.
The majority of the day was our civic lab work day, so in reality, re-orientation day is a bit of a misnomer. Additionally, the only important details about the new semester that were talked about were the new P.E. schedule and semi-important dates for the school year, like finals, prom, and graduation. Expectations were discussed, which are important, however this just gets old. We all know to be responsible, throw away our trash, and be respectful. Some of us just choose not to, and you can’t really just go over expectations and expect things to change. There are more important things that could have been discussed.
I really wish we went over in depth about all the arts credits that are necessary or even at the beginning of the year. As a freshman, having to manage graduation credits and factoring them into the classes I’m planning to take next year is very difficult and stressful. I’ve never had to do this before, and all of a sudden I’m getting one year closer to graduating, and now the pressure to get into certain classes has started to kick in. The problem that I’ve noticed throughout the entire freshman class is that a lot of us don’t exactly know what we need to take. It gets even more complicated for the freshmen taking applied algebra I as they also will have to take algebra II while finding a way to include all the other credits in their next three years.
I don’t think that an entire day blocked off is required for re-orientation. If Ms. Zeller and Mr. Bruno really find it necessary, then it could be easily done in an MX period or special MX. I understand that for convenience purposes it is combined with a civic lab field work day, but it is labeled as a re-orientation day even though it was only an hour.
Despite it taking up a whole day, I did appreciate that it felt like a transition back to school. We got an extra day off while still being in school which kind of ruins the fun of being off, but after two weeks of no school, it takes some time to readjust back to old routines. However, this is the only reason why I enjoyed it.
Reorientation can be a helpful day for the Upper School as a bridge into the new semester. Going forward, I think that the material that is discussed could feature commonly asked questions in the Upper School and turned into an MX or even merged with the curriculum MX as they both somewhat touch on the same topic. This way we can have these new classes in our minds going into the second semester and by the time we must submit our course requests, a more thoughtful decision can be made. I feel the way it was executed was not letting it function to its fullest potential.
