Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Schedule Changes

Every year the week from schedule pick up days through the first days of the school year are filled with students asking about changes to their schedules. I am happy to try to help facilitate schedule change requests, but I need to make sure you know a few things...

1. We are not authorized to make any teacher changes.  Sorry.  I can't move you from one teacher to another teacher's class.  I know that we all have favorite teachers from previous years or teachers that our siblings had that we hoped to have too.  I get it, but the administration works really hard to balance all schedules with timing and course sections and they don't want us to undermine that work by making things unbalanced. 

2. I cannot overload classes.  If a class is full, there is no way for me to add you into the class. Think about it, you know how packed many of the classes are and how many desks are in the room.  Each teacher and each period can only have so many students.

3. You need to have your graduation requirement classes. Obviously a big end goal of your classes is to graduate and so those take priority over every other request.

4. If the classes you have requested are during 1st or 8th period then I cannot give you 1st or 8th period off.  I'm sorry.  I know that a lot of juniors and seniors hope for late arrival or early release, but the only way the master schedule works when the administrators build it is for classes to be spread across all 8 periods.  They focus on eliminating as many conflicts as possible and so that sometimes means a class that is only offered once per day ends up being in 1st or 8th period.

5. I know that a lot of times the hopes and expectations aren't in alignment with what the reality is when you first see your schedule.  Pause and give yourself a little bit of time to process through it.  It can be hard when you think that you're the only one in a particular lunch (I promise you're not) or that you don't have any classes with your friends. Every year I end up encouraging kids to just go to class and give it a try and see who else is in their classes and they realize that a friend they had classes with a year or two ago is also in that class and they are given the chance to rekindle the friendship again. Just don't panic when you see your schedule.

6. If you want to change levels from AP/ IB/ Honors classes that had summer work to other classes without summer work, remember that you are still responsible for completing those summer assignments and the grade will go with you into the new class. (So if you're doing all of that work for the class, are you sure you really don't want to just stick with the class you had requested a few months ago?)

7. If you want to request a schedule change, I will be in my office during schedule pick up times tomorrow and am happy to meet with you. Come see me!

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