Alexis F
Flex: Good or Bad?
How do you use your flex time? Padua has a period between homeroom and the 80 minute period called flex. During this time, a student can catch up on work, study, get extra help from teachers, or get some breakfast in the cafeteria. While there are many different choices for how to spend their flex period, students must use their time wisely for both educational and personal opportunities.
In order to choose where to go, a schedule is put together as a guide for students. Mr. Leizear, the video and TV production teacher at Padua, compiles the schedule. He said, “This isn’t hard to do because each department sends me an email of each teacher’s flex schedule.” Mr. Leizear works out the schedule so each teacher is in a particular place offering a particular kind of mentoring or tutoring.
Padua had an outside management company study and advise the school on its schedule. The new 80 minute period and corresponding flext time were both results of that extensive study. Mr. Leizear said that flex has some “pros and cons.” For one, he said flex can teach time management skills and it can give people the opportunity to catch up on school work.
Mr. Leizear noted that “their are some down sides to flex.” For one, he “wishes we didn’t have to cancel so many flex days for community homerooms and activity days. We didn’t anticipate how many days we wouldn’t have.” Another down side Mr. Leizear mentioned is that, “from a teachers standpoint, a student should not be failing in a class when they have a great opportunity to use flex and get help from teachers.” Unfortunately, many students choose to socialize during flex instead of taking advantage of the availability of their teachers.