We all know what Viking Compass is. We all know the positives, but we may not all know the negatives. Did you know that Viking Compass has changed every year since its institution?

The most recent change was established this school year, which combined the third period and Viking Compass. Initially, between the two periods was an 11 minute passing period. This alteration in the schedule caused mixed opinions around the school, especially because there was no passing period for students to move to a different teacher’s classroom, or “flex.” Moreover, this change inevitably forced the rest of the classes to have modified durations and start and end times. 

After a year of Viking Compass’s new adaptation, more negatives than positives have stemmed from it.

This wasn’t a random decision, as most teachers wanted the combination to occur. The consensus was that having the same students in Viking Compass and a class period would help to generate stronger student-teacher bonds.

“The feedback that we received was that teachers felt like, because they only saw their students in compass two days a week, they didn’t have time to really build relationships with those students because they would see you on Thursday [for only 40 minutes and], they wouldn’t see you again until the following Tuesday, and so it wasn’t enough time to build that relationship,” the Director of Student Supports, Jennifer Rudan, explained.

Rudan and the School Board adjusted the Compass schedule to fix the problem of passing periods.

“Part of the other issue, too, was [that] there was [still] a large number of students in the hallway after that passing period. So it was more of a “how [can we] cut down on this passing period and the amount of time that students are spending in the hallway?” so that only the students who are purposely flexing somewhere are in the hallway,” Rudan mentioned.

While this is a valid point, we aren’t able to meet new teachers or other students as they were able to in the past few years with the prior format because of the eliminated passing period. This feature was a very valuable part of Viking Compass and allowed us to exercise one of the core values of a Profile of a Viking: Communication & Collaboration.

The worst part of this phenomenon hasn’t been any of the scheduling, but it has been the instantaneous spike in no-flex days since its introduction this year. 

Advisory periods were not eligible to be a no-flex day in the months outside of October to April. According to Rudan, there have been a total of 18 no-flex days this school year out of an estimated 48 advisory periods. That’s almost 40 percent of advisory periods that were not used to their full potential. 

This is where the problem arises. The no-flex days have been very untimely for a large number of students who may have needed to get a test completed with another teacher who isn’t their third-period teacher. As a result, the no-flex days have closed the door for us to use the resource with which we were graciously provided. 

Rudan understands this dilemma and is anticipating the student feedback to be against no-flex days. “That’s probably going to be, if I had to guess, the feedback that we get on the survey that we send out, that students don’t like the no-flex days, because they need that time to go see other teachers and get work done. And so we just have to find a happy balance of how we make sure students do their SchooLinks because there’s no other place for students to get that done,” Rudan empathized.

So what’s the solution? 

With the right foundation and plan, H-F could allow us to flex to other teachers, complete whichever SchooLinks, a post-secondary planning platform, or ACT tasks are required of them and then complete the test or discuss what they need to with their teacher. This would call for the school to allow teachers to monitor any student’s SchooLinks progress in order to ensure that we are completing our tasks. 

On a less needy note, Rudan has a simple future proposition for students who want to flex for advisory: don’t have any overdue SchooLinks tasks. 

“[On] the SchooLinks days, we ask teachers just to focus on students who have overdue tasks. So if you have a new assigned task that isn’t due for a month, you could do that on the SchooLinks day, but you could also potentially flex if you don’t have any overdue tasks,” Rudan offered. 

Eliminating no-flex days as a whole would benefit students’ overall success inside and outside of the classroom, and Rudan is open to the idea of adjusting. 

“I think this was the first year we had that scope and sequence of post-secondary curriculum for every grade level, and maybe it was too much. It probably was too much. Hey, we’re overachievers, right? But we can pull it back, and I’m sure we’ll get that feedback, and I’m sure we’ll make those adjustments,” Rudan reflected. 

At the end of the day, we all want students to succeed the best they can, and Viking Compass should be utilized to allow them to capitalize on the period rather than impede their completion of work.