| By Kolsen Shunk | December 6, 2021 |
As many of you know, the Limestone District School Board is reaching out to students about the structure of our school day for the new year. You can vote here before December 7th to have your voice heard on this issue. There are many options you can choose from, such as octomesters, quadmesters, semesters, and modified semesters, but the main contenders are the quadmesters and semesters. My goal is to convince you to vote for quadmesters. Please feel free to comment if you disagree with my conclusion.
My first point is that quadmesters are much safer for students than semesters. The COVID-19 pandemic is worse than ever in Kingston; we now have hundreds of cases, and the numbers don’t seem to be slowing down. We already have several cases of COVID-19 at our school, which poses a risk to students, and the new Omicron variant is now in play. Because quadmesters involve limiting cohort sizes, it is harder to transmit COVID-19, thus keeping our school safer. This makes it less likely that we will have to go into lockdown, and subject to online school.
My second point is that in quadmesters, students can focus more on fewer subjects than in semesters. In quadmesters students only have two courses instead of four. This focus and concentration help students achieve higher grades, which helps significantly with university applications.
My final point is that in quadmesters the overall workload is lower. In a semester the workload may be spread out over five months, but all culminating tasks are due at the same time, which means students can easily fall behind and be overwhelmed in January and June. In quadmesters a student only has to focus on completing two culminating tasks, thus making the completion of these tasks easier.
However, this is not an argument for octomesters. Quadmesters don’t command someone to focus on one subject for five hours a day, and missing one day of school won’t be like missing a week of school. They protect students from COVID-19 while simultaneously allowing students to interact with their friends, and they don’t demand a culminating project be done in just a week. Quadmesters solve the challenges of our times, and I argue that we should stick with quadmesters until COVID-19 is over. Vote for quadmesters!
> help students achieve higher grades, which helps significantly with university applications
Wouldn't everyone getting higher grades just drown out truly talented people? grades cap at 100, so universities would just have to make more guesswork (or weight extra-curriculars much more heavily). > missing one day of school won’t be like missing a week of school Doesn't missing two courses each for half a day (quadmesters) do the same thing? perhaps even worse because you have catch up on work from different classes?
Also, the benefits of semesters are not addressed: increased learning and content, increased course retention, and deeper connections with classmates/peers.
Interesting points about spreading out the workload. I would challenge the claim that focusing on two classes helps students achieve higher grades. Do you think that quadmesters could have negative effects on long term retention of content.