Editorial by Catherine Montoya-Quiroz
Since the return of in-person learning at school, there are many issues that continue to be unresolved by the administration, causing many headaches for the students and the staff at Galileo. One of the biggest of these issues are students in the hallways during class – either arriving chronically late to class or students skipping class all day. Every day there are always students playing and screaming in the hallways (like this is elementary school), which causes a lot of students, like myself, to feel a lot of irritation and anger towards these students & frustration that more isn’t being done.
Loud and obnoxious students in the hallways during class were not a regular occurrence when I was a freshman at Galileo. Although there may have been some hall wanderers, the students skipping never slammed teachers door shut or screamed in the hallways. This year seems to have been an exception. For example, I once was in class, and many students (most likely freshman and sophomores) were in the hallways playing tag, laughing and giggling very loudly. Perhaps they thought it was fun, but it certainly wasn’t for me. It wasn’t fun for me because while I was trying to take that math test I studied for so many hours, people were slamming doors and just being a general annoyance. I am trying to complete tests that are vital for my grade, and these disturbances make me distracted, in turn making me perform poorly on tests due to the nervousness and general anxiety (which was aggravated by the disruptive students).
Another example is students skipping class with other students, and talking very loudly, disrupting the class. This is a problem for me because it makes me not want to go to certain classes and distracts me from the content being taught. Never did I think students would be daring enough to do these types of things in a school setting (as school is a place for learning).
So not only are the actions of the students playing in the hallways during class time irritating, it is also affecting a lot of the students. Many of the students cannot focus on what they are being taught by the teacher. And the teachers oftentimes have to interrupt class in order to tell the students playing in the hallways to go to class. Most of the time, the teachers end up being ignored. This results in the class constantly being interrupted, causing the students to not pay as much attention to the content being taught. Furthermore, the actions taken by these irresponsible students is extremely disrespectful for the students and staff who are making an effort to teach the students. I come to school every day with the intent to learn everything I can so that in the future, I can have a successful career. However, I cannot do that when there are students interrupting my thought process. Personally, I find it quite hard to focus at times. So when the students interrupt class, I lose my focus and somehow end up not being able to focus in class. Inevitably, this affects my performance and quality of work. I know that many other students would be able to relate to me.
Furthermore, like many other students, I end up not wanting to go to certain classes because I know that there will be interruptions in that particular class (the disruptive students seem to have a preferred spot to hang out in). This leads to bad grades and bad performance in class. Small details like this can seriously affect the students and the association they make with certain classes. What I mean by this is that students start associating negative emotions to certain classes because of the disturbances. This negative association might make students feel like some classes are not worth their time and not pay attention in class.
What should be done? I think that further action should be taken to avoid having students playing around in the hallways. Not only should there be more actions, but there should be more severe consequences. When students skip class, the most they get is a call home. But many students disregard the calls and continue as they were. I think that having this type of behavior “punished” with suspension will not work, as this would just let the student miss more class. Furthermore, none of the students care enough to go to class in the first place, so the consequences houldn;t matter to them either. That makes most of the consequences for skipping classes useless.
The consequences should be more severe according to what the administration decides. But besides that, the administrators should investigate why the students are skipping and fix the root causes of this issue. Most students skip, but the reason why is unknown. If there are common reasons as to why the students are skipping, admission could try and provide help as to make these students stop skipping class. There are root causes to every issue in school, and it would be more efficient to find out what is causing the students to skip class and fix the issue.
