Mentoring doesn’t replace Opportunity Period academically

August 30, 2011 • Leslie Ford, staff writer  
Filed under Opinion

Our school used to provide a time for students to have an opportunity period which allowed students to get homework done and missing work caught up. We have gone from having regular OP, to MTSS, now we have turned that time into a new thing called mentoring. Mentoring used to be only for freshmen every so often. Now mentoring is for every student, everyday for the first nine weeks of school. What’s the point of mentoring though? Mentoring is supposed to be a time, where teachers bond with students and help them know where they stand with grades and class work. Students are assigned to a teacher who is in their academy and who can help them with what they are interested in, but yet it seems like they randomly put students with a randomly picked teacher. They should try to fit students with a teacher who relates or teaches some of the classes you are taking. What good comes out of this time though? It doesn’t allow any students time to go talk to other teachers and get missing work done. Agreed we should have a time for students to find their standing with grades and missing work, but meeting everyday pushes mentoring too far.

As a student, having the time to get missing work or current homework done was great, because being involved in school activities makes is hard to get work done at home. Instead of having mentoring, we should take that time to put opportunity period back, or take the extra time and give it to lunch shifts.

“They say they don’t have time to feed everyone in four lunch shifts, but yet we waste our time in mentoring,” sophomore Kaylee Seyferth said.

Mentoring should be thought about and changed to something different. Having the opportunity would be more useful to students, allowing them to maintain and get good grades.

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