"After a two-year process involving school-wide surveys and subcommittees last year, OSA’s new schedule has begun for the 2019-2020 school year. This was decided for a number of reasons, from making room for advisory and college courses, as well as to help historically-struggling students."
--Lola Christ, 6th grade
After a two-year process involving school-wide surveys and subcommittees last year, OSA’s new schedule has begun for the 2019-2020 school year. This was decided for a number of reasons, from making room for advisory and college courses, as well as to help historically struggling students.
The new school year has begun and with this came a brand new schedule leaving some confused to why? Many students are confused with the reasonings behind this big change, adjusting has not been easy. “I think for you (sixth graders/kids new to OSA) it won’t be a challenge because it's how you know the school.” Oz touched on when talking about how students may feel.
The new schedule happened after a very long process of discussions, polls, and teachers pitching in. Current returning OSA students in seventh grade or above should have taken a pole on their opinions about the schedule last year. The subcommittee assigned to OSA’s new schedule took not only your answers, but the answers from your parents, teachers and other faculty members into account to make their decision regarding our new schedule.
“A decision like this is never made by a person,” Principal Oz explained, leaning towards the idea that it wasn’t just him behind it. In fact saying, “Anything you do that involves change there's gonna be people that really love and people that really don’t like it and some that fall in the middle.”
The process of making the hard decision of facing change was described by Mr.Oz as “An intensive self study of the school to try to figure out what would best support our students, particularly those who were historically struggling the most.”
Throughout the interview, Oz mentioned historically struggling students multiple times, making it clear that this was one of their main priorities.
Other main priorities included making time for advisory, lining up with OUSD’s schedule on Mondays in order to help families with kids in other schools, and finally introduce a block schedule.
Block schedule was important to Mr. Oz in order to “Build over time more project opportunities in all of the classes,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure that our classes aren't just open a text book and memorize some answers and fill them out on a test, but actually look deep into the information, and in order to do so it involves doing projects.”
Right now the schedule is expected to stay the way it is, even though many students are confused and disoriented with its current standing. “I think we made the right change,” Oz said, “but I do feel for the people that are like; ‘What is going on? This isn’t how I used to do it!’”
Much of this was not decided by Mr.Oz, in fact he wasn’t in the final subcommittee that took all of the information from the polls, teachers, parents, etc then created the bell schedule; although it could be vetoed by others.
Mr.Oz did mention one of the options for the schedule was to have a four day block schedule, but it was apparently vetoed down quickly. One other option for the schedule would have been cutting art time, which Mr.Oz explained,“We did not have time in our previous schedule to hold advisory unless we cut art time, which it was clear no one wanted to do.”
Speaking of schedule, Mr. Oz mentioned that, “I don’t think it is going to happen but when the school plan was laid out this was meant to be a trial year for somethings that we could visit next year so I think there are three things that could happen: it could stay exactly as it is, which I think is probably the most likely outcome. It could go back to the way it was,” saying he didn’t believe the last option was all too wise, “Or it could possibly move to a full block schedule.”
For the most part, students have been adjusting to the schedule.“I think our students tend to do a great job at adjusting to almost everything, I love that they are vocal about their consequences and I also love their willingness to move forward.” Oz protraid his gratitude for the students' reactions and abrupt adjust. Hopefully not only older students attempting to quickly understand this change, but newcomers such as myself can learn to love it.
The new school year has begun and with this came a brand new schedule leaving some confused to why? Many students are confused with the reasonings behind this big change, adjusting has not been easy. “I think for you (sixth graders/kids new to OSA) it won’t be a challenge because it's how you know the school.” Oz touched on when talking about how students may feel.
The new schedule happened after a very long process of discussions, polls, and teachers pitching in. Current returning OSA students in seventh grade or above should have taken a pole on their opinions about the schedule last year. The subcommittee assigned to OSA’s new schedule took not only your answers, but the answers from your parents, teachers and other faculty members into account to make their decision regarding our new schedule.
“A decision like this is never made by a person,” Principal Oz explained, leaning towards the idea that it wasn’t just him behind it. In fact saying, “Anything you do that involves change there's gonna be people that really love and people that really don’t like it and some that fall in the middle.”
The process of making the hard decision of facing change was described by Mr.Oz as “An intensive self study of the school to try to figure out what would best support our students, particularly those who were historically struggling the most.”
Throughout the interview, Oz mentioned historically struggling students multiple times, making it clear that this was one of their main priorities.
Other main priorities included making time for advisory, lining up with OUSD’s schedule on Mondays in order to help families with kids in other schools, and finally introduce a block schedule.
Block schedule was important to Mr. Oz in order to “Build over time more project opportunities in all of the classes,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure that our classes aren't just open a text book and memorize some answers and fill them out on a test, but actually look deep into the information, and in order to do so it involves doing projects.”
Right now the schedule is expected to stay the way it is, even though many students are confused and disoriented with its current standing. “I think we made the right change,” Oz said, “but I do feel for the people that are like; ‘What is going on? This isn’t how I used to do it!’”
Much of this was not decided by Mr.Oz, in fact he wasn’t in the final subcommittee that took all of the information from the polls, teachers, parents, etc then created the bell schedule; although it could be vetoed by others.
Mr.Oz did mention one of the options for the schedule was to have a four day block schedule, but it was apparently vetoed down quickly. One other option for the schedule would have been cutting art time, which Mr.Oz explained,“We did not have time in our previous schedule to hold advisory unless we cut art time, which it was clear no one wanted to do.”
Speaking of schedule, Mr. Oz mentioned that, “I don’t think it is going to happen but when the school plan was laid out this was meant to be a trial year for somethings that we could visit next year so I think there are three things that could happen: it could stay exactly as it is, which I think is probably the most likely outcome. It could go back to the way it was,” saying he didn’t believe the last option was all too wise, “Or it could possibly move to a full block schedule.”
For the most part, students have been adjusting to the schedule.“I think our students tend to do a great job at adjusting to almost everything, I love that they are vocal about their consequences and I also love their willingness to move forward.” Oz protraid his gratitude for the students' reactions and abrupt adjust. Hopefully not only older students attempting to quickly understand this change, but newcomers such as myself can learn to love it.
