The beginning of a new semester brings new things such as classes, classmates and inconvenient rules.Since the start of the semester, students have been receiving their morning exercise by having to race to Pirate Advocacy Time (PAT) in fear of being swept by hall monitors for not making it to class before the bell rings. If they are swept, students are sent to the cafeteria to be lectured on the importance of PAT and the note system, making it impossible to use PAT in the way it was designed for.
Being slightly late should not result in taking all of a student’s time away. It is clear that we have a problem with tardiness. I know I do, but it seems to be better late than never show up at all. Not being able to attend PAT for arriving even one minute late makes the class seem even more discouraging and the “better late than never” view becomes inaccurate.
Another reason why the sweeps were put into place was because of students loitering in the hallways or not going to the classroom they stated they would be. Although this makes sense, many students could be mistaken for doing this when they are simply tardy.
The new policy is liable make students fail to attend advisory as a whole because of the distress of having to be in class while still half awake. The new rule might help students think of new tactics of procrastination. The combination of putting off homework at night in order to be awake to get to PAT on the dot, and do the rest of one’s homework in the 27 minutes given for PAT seems like a solid plan.
Another rule has been set, stating that if students need help from a teacher in another classroom, they must receive a pass from the teacher a day before. I was under the impression that PAT largely existed as a time to do exactly that. In the past, teachers would check in with each other to make sure a student made it to their class which seemed to work with the majority of students, with of course a few exceptions to some that would use the opportunity to be deceitful. The passes seem to work sufficiently, but I have already seen teachers who are despondent toward the excessive amount of passes they must fill out.
It is understandable that these rules were put in place to curve the excessive amount of kids skipping PAT and loitering in the halls that teachers face, but the school can only do so much toward punishing a student for doing so. This will most likely lead to students not even attending advisory to check in, inevitably adding insult to injury. The majority of students I have seen do not do this anyway and actually try to take advantage of the time PAT provides them with.
I have seen many teachers who do not follow all of the guidelines as well, leaving holes for it to become what it already once was, which seemed to work. Much like the hallway sweeps of yesteryear, I hope these rules vanish, but here is a PAT on the back to the administration for trying.