The percentage of students who feel stressed due to school has been slowly increasing throughout time. However, the purpose of going to school is to learn and become prepared for what the future holds.

Students spend the whole summer mentally preparing for the coming school year but as soon as school starts it can sometimes feel as if it’s taking a toll over your life.

A student’s main worry should be to learn and not to worry about whether or not they slept due to the amount of homework they got. Many students are involved in several extracurricular in and out of school which take up a lot of their time.

The Cougar Block allows for all students to work on their homework, study for future tests, and go to tutoring if they’re not feeling too confident about a class. Students are also able to attend different club meetings which means they don’t have to arrive early to school or stay afterwards.

This allows students to work at school so that when they get home they have time to relax and spend time with family, get more sleep, work a part-time job or get prepared for the next day.

It’s not easy having to push yourself in order to balance your school life, sports, homework, social life, and home life. Which is why the block schedule is the perfect way to prevent students from being sleep deprived or stressed out.

Instead of having the Cougar Block, 9th graders have an advisory period of 28 minutes and its purpose is to be able to do homework or do catch up work. However, they are limited in what they can do since they are not able to go to another teacher for help and have to stay in their 5th period classroom. For example, a student who is having a hard time in their math class has to stay with their 5th period English teacher and won’t be able to get any answers to their questions.

On the other hand, 10th through 12th graders are free to choose what they want to do with their time and whether they want to take advantage of their time. This affects all students who are taking advantage of the Cougar Block because at least 50% of the students have to participate in a weeks time in order for the Cougar Block to stay. However, not all students attend a cougar block and the attendance has slowly been decreasing which could affect all students of THS.

In order for the advisory period to be beneficial for all freshmen, they need to be able to visit other teachers during their advisory period. One solution is for teachers to provide a pass they can give if they truly feel like a student needs tutoring for their class so that during that time students aren’t as restricted. This way freshmen aren’t just limited to receiving help from one class.

Also, all 10th through 12th graders should be encouraged – even required – to attend at least 2 Cougar Blocks a week. This would increase the Cougar Block attendance and encourage students to participate as well as get any extra help they might need and have not seeked.

The new opportunities were implemented to aid students in their studies. But only a quarter of our students are taking advantage of it. All students need to be encouraged to attend tutoring and get the help they need from teachers.