FOCUSing the Lens

Another exhausting and rewarding week has flown by. Some quick highlights of this week have been the basketball games, the UNL Tech EDGE Conference and the musical auditions.

Those are only some of the exciting things that I get to be involved in with the life of this school. One thing that I think sets this school apart from several other high schools I have been involved in or heard about is the addition of the "FOCUS" period.  This is not simply a home room or study hall, but it is almost like a mandatory time that the students need to make up tests, quizzes and assignments. In my mind this acts as a time when you would expect students to come in before school or after school. I have never had the opportunity to see this is action so coming from an outside point of view, I think it is a great idea. It replaced study halls that were occurring throughout the entire day and set it so that the students all had FOCUS during third period. This is also a time when they have the opportunity to go get breakfast. So it serves as a support for the kids who would usually go without food until lunch.

While I like having this class period for the students, there are some bad points to it as well. Many students see it as free time towards the beginning of the school day. It isn't meant to be that, but teachers don't enforce rules regularly across the board so some students see it a certain way while others get away with playing on their phones. It can become just a social event of the day and then the students don't get anything done that the period was originally set up for. While interviewing my CT she said that what used to happen was parents saw it as a time to take their kids out of school for appointments. Granted, this is probably a better time to do it rather than during class, but it started getting out of hand. Another down side to having FOCUS is that the administration would schedule pep rallies, meetings with seniors or a variety of other events during this time to save class time. However, that was not what the purpose of FOCUS was originally laid out to accomplish.

The best parts of FOCUS as seen by my CT is that the students have unlimited access to all the teachers since they know they will be available for questions or makeup assignments. Along those lines the teachers know that all the students will be available as well for them to call them in. Another use of the FOCUS time was for a chance for students to take an online class. Not many students take this option, but it still is a time for that opportunity.

Junior high students do not have a period like this. This is all due to scheduling and trying to work around the teachers' schedules. I feel like this is a great opportunity for the students at this school.