HC mandates new advisory schedule for students

HC+mandates+new+advisory+schedule+for+students

Christiana Barlow, Editor

 

The educational platform EVERFI is used to provide financial literacy and financial education courses for K-12 students about banking and life skills. It is a required free course taught at HC by all advisory teachers. However, many teachers and students have been frustrated with this new schedule. It gives students less study time, and teachers more workload. On the other hand, many teachers believe that this will help students to be prepared for the future. 

HC Chemistry teacher Tim Bailie believes that the EVERFI financial literacy courses will help students’ education and will prepare them for future jobs and goals. This includes investing money, banking skills, and managing money in general. 

“I think it helps them understand serious life skills needed for the future,” Bailie said. “One of the courses is how to do taxes, another one is how to invest money, another one is how to start a bank account, and lastly how to manage finances. Everybody needs to know how to open a bank account and know how to handle money, as well as knowing how to do your taxes.” 

This new program is a requirement to graduate at HCHS, which means if students do not complete all assignments, they will not be eligible to graduate. The good news is that SBDM voted to receive 1/4 credit per semester if they complete this course. The unfortunate news is that if students do not complete this course, they will be held back. This will have a major impact on students’ futures if they do not complete this course.  

“Starting with this year’s 11th graders, you have to show that you have passed this financial literacy piece in order to graduate,” Bailie said. “They made this a requirement to graduate so that all kids get access to it. HC also made it a quarter credit to give kids an incentive to do it, making it actual credit for graduation. If you do not pass, you will not be able to graduate,” Bailie said.  

On the other hand, HC English teacher Tommy Craft believes that Advisory creates an extra workload for teachers. While he does believe this could help students in the future, he finds it hard to incorporate an extra class when he could be preparing or grading work for his other classes.  

“One Sunday morning I worked on advisory for three hours. I feel that people don’t understand how stressful and time-consuming [assignments] can be,” Craft said. “I want to meet expectations, but it’s challenging. It’s creating additional stress instead of it being a source to alleviate it.” 

Craft feels that all the extra work takes away from his planning during the day. 

“I feel that all of this [extra work] takes away from the classes that I teach because I’m planning for advisory and grading their assignments in addition to everything else,” Craft said, “and it’s frustrating because we receive so much information from so many different people about what to do in advisory. Topics don’t seem to fit well together. There is no continuity. It’s a homeroom with homework for everyone.” 

Students are also concerned that advisory has been taking away from class time. Instead of students working on homework from other classes, they are required to complete assignments. So many parts of the course are required which takes a large amount of time to do.  

While this program could be helpful for students in the future, some students are still concerned about not having time to study and complete assignments. Specifically for teachers the concern is not having enough time for grading and planning for their next class. For many this is affecting their education and needs to be addressed.