At Cascade High School, the day starts off with first period, followed by a 30-minute flex period, and then the day continues into second, third, and fourth periods. This break in the first half of the day is designed to help students and staff alike manage workload, relax, stay caught up, and for the administration to have a time for necessary school wide events. Recently, many students, especially student athletes or those who work, have been struggling to keep up with their work, in part due to not being able to use Flex time for it.
For the past few weeks, many Flex days have been unavailable to students because of school or grade-wide required activities. These include programs such as Character Strong, grade-specific lessons, 30-minute-to-win-it, Xello, and surveys such as the Healthy Youth survey.
Character Strong is a social-emotional learning program mandated by the state designed to help students develop skills for everyday life. Grade-specific lessons are developed to help students with new challenges they may be facing in their grade, such as PSAT and SAT help for juniors, and college application help for seniors. 30-minute-to-win-it was adopted by Cascade to help freshmen transition into high school, and for them to develop better connections with upperclassmen. Zello is a high school and beyond plan that prepares students for graduation and what comes after.
Individually, all these programs are great resources for students to use for long term success, but they make it difficult for students to succeed day to day. There has not been a readily available or reliable calendar for students to use to keep track of which days are open, which along with club and sport meetings during Flex, makes it very difficult for students to complete homework, or have time to ask teachers for help.
Students need an updated and reliable calendar for the Flex schedule that includes at least two consistent days a week for guaranteed free work time. Skill and grade specific programs should be consolidated where possible.
“For our students that have a job, or do athletics, or whatever, and have to ride the bus and don’t have the time before and after school, when Flex is taken up with other things it makes it hard for them to stay on track academically,” explains Cascade teacher Omar Stubblefield.
Not only is Flex a time for students to do work and keep on track, especially if they have missed school for extracurriculars, but it is also a nice time for students to relax and help balance their academic and social lives.
“I have culinary club, I’m part of MECHA, I am doing cross country right now, and then I’ve got a bunch of college classes,” lamented junior Cruz Martinez, who continued: “Having a lot of random events from the school is really annoying during Flex, because I just want to enjoy my Flex, either relax or get my work done or whatever. I think distribute what events or what's going to go on during Flex more broadly, because recently I think it's just been like packing so much together in the same week, that [for students who already don’t want to be in school] it's just making them not want to be in school more.” For students, especially juniors and seniors, with intense and work heavy classes, Flex is a much-needed time to relax and de-stress with friends.
While students do need time to get individual work done, high schoolers have not been known to be the best at keeping themselves accountable.
“I’ve always been a supporter of Flex, because it has been a way for me to follow up with students individually who are struggling in my classes. So, if someone is missing, or they missed a test or something or they want to do buy-backs, Flex is perfect for that, and so I really appreciate that about Flex. However, what I’ve found is that in order for Flex to be valuable to me as a teacher, I have to reach out to students and say, ‘you need to come see me in class today’,” explained Cascade teacher Malia Renner-Singer.
For some students, even if they have work to do, they choose to use Flex time to hang out or relax, and that can make it hard on teachers who need to connect with them. “I do though think that students need to remember that you don’t have a right to Flex. School goes from 8 to 3, not 8 to 9:30 and then 10 to 3. So, it's not like you don’t have school from 9:30 to 10, because you do, and so students sometimes forget that. They think they just have the right to go out and do whatever they want during the time and that’s totally not true,” said Renner-Singer. While the administration has the right to use school hours however they see fit, if the student body needs to see a change , it is incumbent that they advocate for themselves.
This plan was put into place by a team of administrators including Mr. Joya, Ms. Bibby, Ms. Schafer, Ms. Reiki, and Ms. Gonzales. “The plan and the intention is to set specific days for specific topics.... I think that we could add even more consistencies to [the calendar],” stated Cascade Vice-Principal Annika Bibby. “I’ve heard from students that they want to have days they can count on for open Flex to be able to meet with teachers and whatnot.”
If students and teachers could count on a clear calendar, then it would be easier to plan for the week to make sure everyone has time to get individual tasks done. However, this also means that there have to be open days every week for students to do with as they see fit. This might be accomplished by consolidating programs such as 30-Minute-to-Win-It and grade-specific lessons with Zello and Character Strong. If these could be accomplished on the same day, it would leave more Flex periods open during the week.
“Being a student athlete is a big responsibility to be able to maintain grades and keep up with that, but I do think it's important to plug in social emotional learning and high school and beyond planning and that type of thing. I think we can do all of it, but I think we really need to hold consistency through all of it,” elucidated Bibby. Through collaboration and clear communication between the admin, teachers, and students, Flex can be utilized in the best and most effective way to help students succeed and grow.
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