by Bailey Schwab & Anna Hovet, News Editors
The new school year brings new policies. This school year, there will no longer be Hawktime twice a week, students will have to place phones in backpacks during testing, and English teachers are no longer allowed to teach the “Five Paragraph Essay”.
Arguably, the biggest change within River Hill has been the subtraction of Monday hawktimes. This presented students with an unnecessary addition of stress. James Fisher, World History teacher at River Hill agrees that this creates unnecessary problems for students. “A lot of kids are overworked and two breaks during the week was very useful,” Fisher explains, “I don’t think there were negative results from hawktimes.”
A common place students go during hawktime is the art room. Caro Appel, art teacher at River Hill, says that “Hawktime was valuable and I’m [Appel] sad that we don’t still have two.” This decrease in hawktime was not River Hill’s administration’s idea, but the board of education’s effort to create “equity across the county,” says Appel, “This is the first year everyone has access to one hawktime.”
The infamous five paragraph essay has been commonly taught as a organizational tool to help with writing. Students are taught to write an introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph.
However, despite this change, teachers remain optimistic. Lisa Kump, an English teacher, explains that she’s “okay with moving away from the five paragraph essay format, but I’m [Kump] discouraged with the lack of new models being offered.”
Many students succeed by seeing an example of what they need to do. “We always need models for students,” says Kump.
As for the new phone policy, teachers choose whether or not to implement the new policy in their classroom. Sybil Kessinger, the health teacher, believes it “should be unnecessary, but there are always kids who cheat.”
Teachers like Munding and Goodrich strictly employ this rule. However, some teachers like Wester aren’t even aware of the policy change.