Students at FHN have taken a notice on how the homeroom policies have changed this year. No one knows how or if it will benefit the school in any way. It is a trial run for the staff and educators to see if this will decrease terrible behavior in school with the goal of making the school feel more like a community.

“Since I became a mentor, I noticed how hard the teachers are working to make the school a better place for the students,” Senior Amber Mayfield said.

A great number of changes have occurred to make Knight Time feel more like a community for the school. One of these changes, the name change from homeroom to Knight Time.

“I would rather it be called homeroom, because that’s what I called it all through high school,” senior Lindsey Harris said.

One of the greatest changes for mentors and students is that mentors will now be giving class lessons with mixed grade levels and classes, whereas last year lessons were just given by grade level and by the last name. Now its based off a random number generator. This switched everyone’s homeroom around, creating mixed homerooms with random people.

“What surprised me the most about mentors is instead of just helping freshmen adjust to the school, it’s helping all the grades get involved in the school,” Mayfield said.

In the past, mentors used to give lessons to a group of five or six kids with two mentors per group. Now with an extremely large group of homerooms, there are around 20 students with one mentor for the entire class.

“I don’t like how there is only one mentor for each group when some mentors truly need some help to reach out to the large group of people,” junior Allie Moore said.

On Gold Days, students can travel to different homerooms similar to how homerooms worked in the past. Gold days are only two Wednesdays out of the monthly four. For the other two Wednesdays students have a lesson either from a mentor or from a teacher. On Black Days, mentors try to get students involved with each other and to be a part of their lives, by asking questions and by getting the other students to think about how they could improve.

“In my Knight Time group we talk about issues around the school and express what we think about them and what we can change about them,” Moore said.

Students have been noticing big changes in the school since mentors have been applied. There are fewer fights and escorts are no longer needed. Yet some people at school do not enjoy mentors because it is taking up time they would have been using for test retakes, homework or just a break in the school day.

“I don’t like mentors on Black Days, when I have a lot of homework to do for other classes,” Harris said.

Some upperclassmen do not think that mentors are what they need since they’ve been through the school for years before. Some students don’t like having all the grades involved and would rather have it just be by grade level, while others seem to enjoy mentors because it seems to help the school with the issues it had in the past year. Some of the upperclassmen have agreed mentors are not a great idea.

“Maybe we could add some activities on Black Days to make Knight Time, more involved to some students so we are better connected,” Moore said.