With the school PA system not working school wide, the administration, led by A.P. Avar decided to hold staff & ASB announcements during 2nd and 4th period over Zoom every Wednesday in order to help more people hear school wide announcements.
The idea of school announcements came because some students do not check Instagram, or the newsletter for information about school events. A.P. Avar talked about how this will be an ongoing activity. She said, “We plan on doing this the entire rest of the year. This is essentially in place of the homeroom. This gives us time to show G-house, and other various school news. We always will have something to show, so these will be on the rest of the year, and we are excited.”
A.P. Avar continued, saying, “We started last week because we, as a staff, talked about what we can do to make our school better. We noticed that Wednesday block classes have an extra 10 minutes, and in order to balance everything out, we decided to start doing these meetings during the last 10 minutes of class. It gives us a great opportunity to show these meetings” .
So far the school has had a mixed response to the “Bonus Block” announcement time. Physics teacher Mr Barrios thinks the meetings are interesting. He said, ”I like the idea of this. The purpose behind the meetings are really good. I do think it could use some more organization though. During the ASB meetings, I saw students walking around so I hope that leads to a more cohesive showing next time. I will be showing my students these videos, and I applaud the admin for trying this out, and it is actually working well”.
Senior David Russel enjoys the new zoom meetings and would like to see more of them in the future. He said, “I think the zoom meetings are actually pretty cool, I like the announcements and the asb that give the news. It’s new and it’s fun for the school and the kids. I would like to continue to keep seeing them, I know some teachers don’t show them so i t would be cooler if more did, and it’s a little break from class.”
Math teacher Mr. Thayer thought the meetings were a good source of information for people at the school both students and staff. He said, “I think the meetings are good. I’ve been here for 4 years, and I’ve never heard the school talking about cheating, academic integrity or rules. So I think it’s good to have a central space to talk about these things. I showed it in my class and everyone watched. I’ll continue to show it too. Overall I think the zoom meetings were a good idea and informative.”
However, senior Josh Ko was not a fan of the meetings and thought they should stop. He said, “I thought nobody was listening to them and everyone was just taking it as a joke. I don’t think these should continue because nobody was taking it seriously. Nobody respects the zoom meetings or the people on them. I also didn’t find them interesting at all.”
