EHHS students and teachers are experiencing a new schedule this fall that provides students with a 45 minute “Flex Block” every day to meet with the teachers or complete work. Both students and teachers agree that flex is a nice extra period to have during the day, but they both agree for different reasons.
Most students like flex because it gives them “an extra study hall period.” An EHHS senior, Katherine Tapia, stated that she has a love-hate relationship with flex because “it is basically free time or a study hall, but they don’t allow us to use phones, moreover, the class is crowded.” According to her, over the past few weeks, she hasn’t really finished anything in flex. Mainly because there isn’t anything that really needs to be done during flex.
There are also some students who don’t like flex periods. For example, EHHS sophomores Aeden Conners and Gustavo Flores-Soto. Aeden “doesn’t like it” but also at the same time he thinks it is nice. The nice thing that Aeden points out about flex is that it allows students to catch up with their work, especially for students who are in higher grade levels. But the bad thing is that no cell phones are allowed during flex block. According to both Gustavo and Aeden, cell phones should be allowed because flex is basically a study hall so they should be able to use their cell phones to contact other people.
Unlike the students, most teachers enjoy flex because they give them the time they need to spend with their students. Mr. Adam Gardner, EHHS social studies teacher, thinks flex gives students the time and chances to reach out for help. “I like it because I think it gives students an opportunity to get support.” He also stated that he had helped two students to improve their grades after a flex period. He “[could] communicate with their teacher asking for instructions on what they should do to improve their grades.” Similarly to Mr. Gardner, Ms. Themis Valsamis, EHHS English and ESL teacher, also thinks flex is nice thing for the EHHS community, but she does think it is too crowded. “The flex class is a little too large.” Otherwise, she does have the same opinion as Mr. Gardner.
Most students think flex schedules affect students the most because of many different factors. Gustavo stated “Flex [doesn’t] affect teachers as much as it affects students.” Flex basically “gives teachers more time to plan out their day while they give students the opportunity to seek help or to do any work and missing assignments.” Ms. Valsamis thinks that flex affects teachers the most because flex gives her more students to be responsible for. She said, “I had never met some of these kids before, I have to keep them on track academically.” Similar to Ms. Valsamis, Mr. Gardner thinks that flex affects teachers because flex allows him to “work with students in a different capacity in a classroom.” Mrs. Michalowski agrees with the students thinking flex affects them the most but most specifically it affects the seniors because flex gives seniors 45 minutes every day to work on their college applications or essays.
Although they all have different views and opinions about the flex schedule, they all agree that the flex schedule will remain EHHS’s permanent schedule for a while with some adjustments and changes.
