A Change Undone

February 12, 2008

Last school year, my predecessor, Alex Prasad, wrote an article on the changes to freshman seminar. The new program implemented during the ’06-’07 school year was called “Character is Everything,” where the school would bring in guest speakers during seminar to talk to the freshman about various topics. The president of St. John’s Providence Hospital came to speak about integrity. Dr. Lee Meadows from Walsh College talked about diversity. A distance swimmer talked about perseverance. This was supposed to help develop and improve the character of the incoming students.

Alex ended his article by saying “The results of this program won’t be seen for years, perhaps never as the program searches to mold one of the most intangible elements of a person’s being: character.” There is one problem: we will never know if it would have helped. The program is no longer in effect.

Like Alex before me, I am a freshman mentor, so I am directly affected by these changes in seminar. I applied to be a mentor thinking I was going to either keep the freshmen’s attention on the speakers, or leading activities teaching the freshmen about high school. But neither has happened. It’s not just the new program that was taken out, but basic activities that we did my freshman year were as well. It seems like freshman seminar has reverted back to its first year in existence (no activities, just freshmen and a couple mentors) over the summer.

I’m not entirely sure why they decided to ditch the “Character is Everything” program, but I believe it is for one simple reason: school. The freshmen are in school for a reason, and that is to learn.

With last year’s program, a big chunk of time was taken out of seminar for freshmen every week. Seminar is in our school day so students can go get extra help from teachers, mentors, or classmates if they did not understand a lesson in class. Yet freshmen, who arguably need this time the most as they adjust to a tougher high school workload, had this time taken away. Most likely, the decision to scrap the program was made to prevent freshmen from falling behind.

This year, however, we have gone to the other extreme; we do absolutely NOTHING. No activities, no speakers, no anything. The only thing my freshmen have done was visit a club/volunteer fair, where clubs and volunteer organizations told them to join. But even this was ineffective; the freshmen just socialized until it was time to leave. Now, the freshmen just sit in the classroom doing homework. Yes, they can get help from us mentors or go to their teachers, but it isn’t freshmen seminar anymore, it’s just study hall.

I don’t understand why all activities have been eliminated from freshmen seminar. My freshmen year, we had an activity on Tuesdays for half of seminar (seminar is on Tuesdays and Thursdays), which helped us adjust to high school. One time, our mentors led us on a school tour. Another time, our mentors gave us advice on how to manage a high school schedule (much more crammed than middle school). Not only were these activities helpful, but we would still have half of seminar to get help for our classes. This is the way I think it should be, at the middle ground; activities to help freshmen, but that would not keep them from getting academic help.

Who knows what freshmen seminar will be like in the future. Maybe the “character is everything” program will be brought back, or maybe it will go back to the way it was my freshman year. Next year could even be the last year of seminar (according to teachers, the school could be rearranging their daily schedule for the ’09-’10 school year).

We’ll just have to wait and see.