Last Tuesday, Co-Presidents David Gutierrez ’15 and Rebecca Somer ’15 sent an email to the student body inviting students to volunteer to be shadowed by a faculty member from scheduling committee. Each of these faculty members would accompany a volunteer student through their daily schedule, including their academic classes, athletic activities and extracurricular club meetings. This day in the Spring Term will give faculty members a better idea as to what specific issues arise in students’ schedules.
As it stands, teachers often do not seem to understand what it means to attend a school with such a ceaseless nature. Many teachers treat students as though their class is the only one students have obligations to attend or as if their tests are the only ones we have to study for. Even further, academics are not the only commitments we have. We dedicate our time to sports, music, theater and clubs that we are passionate about.
We feel as though we are in constant motion, and this issue is compounded by the fact that we are a boarding school. When school is also home, it can begin to feel as though its is impossible to completely escape the cycle of late nights, homework and sports practice. And while it is possible to complete all of our assignments, attend all our commitments and go to bed at a reasonable time, at what expense? Should we be expected to forsake spending time with friends or doing our laundry or even taking some time to waste time on the Internet every once in a while? It should not be necessary to always choose work over our free time in order to thrive at Andover.
Our schedules are packed, hectic and sometimes stressful, and it often feels as though it is impossible to get everything done in the time frame we are given. We are so excited for teachers to go through our schedules with us — this is a great way for them to see firsthand what students experience every day so the scheduling committee can ensure that the new schedule caters to our needs. We are thrilled that our Co-Presidents have taken this initiative and that faculty members are expressing interest in our needs. We hope that schedule shadowing will encourage faculty to address other issues, including workload, sleep and stress, all of which are directly related to our schedule.
_This editorial represents the views of The Phillipian Editorial Board CXXXVIII._
