Since the 2022-2023 school year, Collierville High School has run on a block schedule. This means students have 5 blocks per semester, including 1 block called seminar. The original purpose of seminar was to be used for “ACT Prep,” a homeroom to share important information, and show what was previously called “Collierville AM,” now known as “Dragon Daily.”
There are supposed to be these helpful things happening during seminar, but nothing is achieved. Administration makes a push on using the program ChalkTalk for ACT prep, but the issue with that is the fact that the program never works properly. Nearly every day 9-11th grade students walk into seminar and are told to complete their ChalkTalk, but very few of them achieve this task. The program struggles with simply running but the school will not give up on it. This battle has been going on for over a year, and no one seems to be letting up on making students try with no avail to the program functioning effectively.
Because no one can prep for the ACT, the block ends up being used as a study hall or if a student’s teacher is really bent on waiting for ChalkTalk to work, it becomes time wasted during the students’ school day. This essentially means that seminar is not useful to students. But this time does not need to be wasted, it could be used to solve a pressing issue within the school: the amount of time given for lunch.
Currently, students are given 25 minutes for lunch, this is not enough time to complete all the things that students might need to do. Teachers make a point to say that students should complete tasks during their lunch, but when do they have time? Students do not even receive enough time to use the bathroom during lunch. If you are an average student buying lunch at Collierville high, you would first have to make your way to the cafeteria. This task is more difficult than teachers and staff may think. This is because there are tons of students also going to lunch at the same time, so the hallways get very congested, causing the walk to take even longer than it should. Going through the lunch line could be up to a 15-minute wait depending on what is being served. This is caused because there is an abundance of students trying to get through what is most of the time limited to just three lines. By the time students leave the line and find a place to sit in the crowded cafeteria. There would roughly be 7 minutes left in lunch which is not near enough time to eat let alone catch up with friends or complete homework.
Seminar would be a lot more beneficial to everyone if the time was instead used for lunch. If students could use the extra time added to lunch for a study hall or to even just take a break after 5 hours of instruction, they could be more prepared for class and more willing to participate. While this task would not be as easy to implement as anyone would like, it would be worth it to everyone it affects.
