In past years, Knight Time was a tool that could be used for academics, getting to hang out with your friends and just relaxing between classes. This year it has changed, and students and teachers have different opinions on the new rules and how Knight Time works this year. In more recent years, Knight Time has been twice a week and students had more free range to travel to other classes. This year Knight Time is one day a week, the classes are arranged by grade and teachers are responsible for going through the students’ grades to determine if they need academic help.
“I believe the administration chose to change the traveling because people would travel for non-academic reasons, and it got out of hand,” senior Lance Salke said. “I’m not sure why they changed Knight Time to only happen on Wednesdays, but I think it’s a great time to get homework done, and it would be nice to go back to two days a week.”
The new guidelines are meant to help struggling students with their grades by giving them allotted time during school to get work done. It is also designed to get students the help they need from each subject’s designated Knight Time teacher.
“The intent of Knight Time is for students to get academic support,” Principal Jeff Fletcher said. “Maybe they don’t have a lot of time after school because they play sports, or they have a job, it gives them some time to complete some of that work during the day. It also eventually would give them time if they begin to struggle with some of that work, to be assigned to a help room for a week or two to get additional support from a teacher in that content area.”
Now that Knight Time has been established as a place only to work on academic success, some clubs that previously met during Knight Time have been moved to the afternoon, before school or abolished completely due to most students having jobs, sports, taking the bus or other extracurricular activities.
“It does not bother me how Knight Time is being used,” English teacher Ashley Siess said. “What bothers me is that there’s not alternative accommodations being put in place for club time to happen during the school day… I think that’s really unfair to a lot of our students, when we tell them that they need to be super involved and do more stuff, but then we take away the chance for them to do that during the school day.”
While some people are struggling to adjust to the change, most are happy due to the more cleanliness of the setup and like that Knight Time is more academically based and not as clustered. The new setup is easier for teachers as well when it comes to attendance and organization.
“I like having one grade level, I think it will give us the opportunity to focus on the kids in that grade and focus on their work, especially when they get closer to graduation it’s a lot easier,” History teacher Kimberly Coil said. “I remember having both setups, and I liked having a mixed homeroom and how they interacted, but I feel for information purposes and helping students with specific courses it’s easier to react to one group that they are learning the same material.”
Although it’s not the school’s past routine, The Knight Time change was meant for the better of Francis Howell, and hopefully within time academic progress will improve and students will feel like they can receive the help they need.
