Dima Yasin and Sophia Evans
eSomethin staff
It’s the end of the day. You stare at your homework, the words all seeming scrambled on the page. Your head is pounding from all the built up stress of the entire day, but the time on the clock shows 3:15 – still ten minutes until you can go back home to your cozy, quiet home, comfy couch, and your adorable dog with its soft, warm fur. You continue to sit in silence, wondering how this experience has stayed the same from sixth to twelfth grade.
Jacket Time is a new addition to the schedule at PHS. Previously, this period was only for students from grades five through eight. The purpose of Jacket Time is to provide students and teachers time to meet and address needs at the end of each school day.
Three minutes from each class period and one minute from time passing times between periods were reorganized to create space for Jacket Time. The new 28-minute Jacket Time is intended for tasks like completing work, Panorama surveys, pep rallies, and assemblies.
Many current students at PHS have gone through the exact scenario of feeling tired and uncomfortable in Jacket Time at the end of the day.
One opinion is that this addition is very helpful.
“You can get your work done if you need to get work done,” freshman student Finnegan Ziemkiewicz said. He said Jacket Time is like an extra study hall, and you can finish extra work.
“I don’t think there are really many cons to Jacket Time,” Ziemkiewicz said.
Fiona Davies, a freshman, sees Jacket Time differently.
Davies said that Jacket Time is a waste, especially if students already have the option of study hall, where kids can ge their work done if they choose to. Davies says it’s unfair to force students to have work time if they don’t want it.
“A lot of kids are just done with the day,” she adds. “I also feel like since we’ve done Jacket Time for so long, a lot of people don’t think of it as a good thing.”
Davies said that having Jacket Time from grades five to nine is a tedious experience so far.
Older students remember years of high school before Jacket Time was in place.
“Jacket time does give us more time to do our work, but it also takes time from our periods, still giving us more work,” said Zaid Yasin, a junior.
Yasin said that students should be allowed to choose if they have work time or not.
“If we already had things like early release, late arrival, and study hall, why do we need Jacket Time?” Yasin asked.
Jacket Time this year has proven for some students to be a good resource to finish work, and have additional time for school events like pep rallies and taking surveys. For others, it’s just extra, unnecessary time in the day when options like a study hall already exist.
Disclosure: Zaid Yasin is the older brother of Dima Yasin, a reporter on this story.
Other stories on eSomethin:
