At Linganore High School, (LHS) free time comes in the form of “Prep time.”
Prep time happens during the last 45 minutes of class every Wednesday. Prep time serves as a period where students can visit teachers to do make-up work, study, receive tutoring, or even just relax and take a brain break.
However, Prep wasn’t always this way.
Prep used to it’s own 30 minute class period after second block every day. This allowed for more students to get the help they needed, as well as tutoring and making up missing work. You would even go to an entirely different teacher for Prep.
To the dismay of many students, this changed just last year to once a week, every Wednesday. Though, there are some students who believe that the way Prep is currently is superior.
LHS freshman, Ketan Bholankar, is one of these students.
He believes that Prep is perfect the way it is and that “it would be weird to change the schedule,” due to not having known what old Prep was like.
Bholankar went on to talk about how current Prep gave him more time to breathe and relax while also giving him enough time to study.
With the way Prep is currently, some students enjoy the extra time, having 15 more minutes in exchange for it being once a week.
On the other hand, many juniors and seniors who experienced the old Prep think otherwise.
LHS senior, Andrew Akin, believed that having Prep every day after second block is far more beneficial.
When he talked about Prep, he described it as refreshing and joyous for a multitude of reasons.
“I got way more work done than I do now with the current prep.” Akin said.
He also shared that old prep time allowed him to relax and enjoy his days at Linganore. Regarding increasing the length of school hours, he believed it should be longer.
In Frederick County, schools are required to either be in school a certain amount of hours, or a certain amount of days.
This means, if there are unexpected snow days or days where we are unable to come to school, those days get taken from summer break.
By increasing the amount of hours in school, there would not be a need to take days from summer, as students are in school for a set amount of time which would meet 1 of the 2 requirements.
Not only that, but according to Walden University, having more time in the school day could provide teachers with more time to teach. With more time to teach, students would have the chance to learn more and raise their grades.
However, the idea lacked support and had mostly negative responses.
LHS junior Anthony Cretella expressed his dissatisfaction for the idea of adding more time to the school day.
“Leaving at 2:15 is the perfect stop time. It’s not too early or too late and I feel like increasing it would be too much,” Cretella said.
While having longer school hours could help with teaching, extending the day is not proven to provide better grades nor better moods.
All things considered, the time students leave school is perfect due to accommodating schedules of parents and extracurricular activities such as sports or clubs.
