courtesy of Caroline Burch ’15
Hurricane Sandy brought a whirlwind of hardships to communities on the east coast, but to some, it also brought enjoyment. The daily Facebook statuses and tweets of Convent of the Sacred Heart students during the week of the hurricane displayed their excitement about missing seven days of school.
Although joyous at the moment, students were soon informed of the school’s hope to make up for lost time. The following days have been added to the calendar:
- Friday, December 7
- Thursday, December 20
- Friday, December 21
- Friday, January 18 2013
Some think these days will be useless and unproductive, while others hope to make effectual use of them.
Upper School AP Calculus teacher Mr. Joel Padilla was relaxed about the loss of days and plans to carry on with the curriculum. He will not be able to go into depth with some concepts, however. He says the added days are not vital to his own teaching of the AP course, but he feels that they could be useful in the future.
“It is nice to have them as a cushion in case of future snowstorms where we will have to miss school,” Mr. Padilla said.
Like Mr. Padilla, Mrs. Gail Casey, Upper School Assistant Head and Academic Dean, also sees the benefit in days being added to the schedule.
“The school has no idea what is coming over the rest of the winter,” Mrs. Casey said. “We don’t know if there is more to come so it’s good to make up days as soon as possible.”
She hopes that in the long run this will reduce the stress on both students and teachers.
Upper School AP Chemistry teacher Dr. Victoria Landry feels the days are definitely necessary, especially for AP classes.
“Since the date of the AP exam cannot be moved, we definitely have fewer class periods to learn the same amount of material but I know the students can meet the challenge.” Dr. Landry said.
The days being added to the schedule have replaced days off for students. December 7 had originally been scheduled for parent teacher conferences, while January 18 was a faculty development day. However, the addition that seems to be the most controversial to students is the full academic day on Thursday, December 20 and the half-day of academics on Friday, December 21.
Although it is only an added day and a half, some students do not see the point in these extra days.
“It will be hard for teachers to assign work because Thursday is the day after the Christmas Concert and Friday we only have a half-day of classes,” sophomore Meg Gerli said.
Upper School mathematics teacher Mrs. Judene Pendergast thinks differently.
“The two days added to school before Christmas are useful since it was nice to come back from Thanksgiving knowing that we had four solid weeks of work,” Mrs. Pendergast said.
Students and teachers have different opinions as to whether the days added to the calendar are necessary. Either way though, the school has made an attempt to regain lost time and prepare for any future surprise holidays.
– Alice Millerchip, Staff Writer
