The second semester has brought a lot of new things to being a student at WCHS. The first thing that comes to mind is the new school. The school is great, and while it was somewhat of a pain to move in the middle of the school year, the good outweighs the bad. The school is very clean and bright, and students and teachers won’t have to worry about any mice or bats crawling around the school like they did at the old building. The gym is also huge and doesn’t flood whenever it rains. Classrooms are more comfortable with new chairs and tables.
However, students are upset about the parking. Many students who do work based learning are parked in the staff lot, which is further away from the entrance to the school. When you leave school for your work based learning class, you have to exit the building from the doors where the office is. The student parking lot is much closer to this exit than the staff lot is. This may seem like a minor inconvenience, but some work based learning students only have one class for the day, and find themselves walking to and from their car longer than they were in class.
Another new thing this spring semester has brought to WCHS is the phone policy. Students are required to put their phones into a locked box when they walk into class. Obviously, students have taken issue with this rule. Phones are a huge part in everyone’s lives, and it’s hard to take that away from someone when they are used to always having it. Students are wondering what they would do in an emergency, and the answer is they would have to use the school phone to contact a family member. We had a false fire alarm pulled last week during class, and everyone grabbed their phone first thing, so I think the faculty is more lenient during an emergency than previously said. If I were to have a family emergency, I would rather speak on my personal phone in a private place, instead of the office, but I’m sure after the fire alarm students will be able to talk on their phones during an emergency. The only plus I’ve found to the phone policy is that I am more productive in class and have fewer distractions. This was the reason the phone policy was implemented, and although I understand the reasoning, I wish we could still have our phones.
All in all, the second semester has brought up many new things to students at WCHS. After these first couple weeks blow by, all these new things will become normal for students.