By Ornella Attias, Year 10; Hermione Silver, Year 9; Aimee Beecroft, Year 9; and Fiona Meagher, Year 9
Students in LGB’s Secondary School have been introduced to the learning commons program this year and have all become familiar with it. Learning commons is a system put in place by the school administration where there is a “floating” single or double period during most weeks where students do not have normal class, and it is designed to ensure that students do not feel too overloaded with work allowing them to get their work done during school hours. To find out more about what the student body thought of the program, we interviewed half a dozen students about their opinions.
We first wanted to know what students typically do during learning commons. Teymour Al-Habal (Y9) told us “Learning commons gives us the opportunity to work on ourselves and gives the students a bit more freedom”. Another Year 9 student said that he uses the time to finish his homework or catch up on work. He also added that he never had a learning commons period where he did not have something academic to do. Rami Samawi (Y10) and one of his Year 10 peers both said that the period was useful, but mentioned how teacher supervision is needed to keep the students working and focused.
An IB student we interviewed told us that “[Learning Commons] is good because it means we can meet with our mentors which is beneficial for our IB preparation. It also means we have extra time to study for our tests”. The students from the other years we interviewed agreed that learning commons was helpful for finishing homework on time, and said that it should stay an integral part of LGB students’ weekly timetable.
Only a single Year 13 student had negative views on learning commons, and she thought it was “sketchy” to be giving the illusion to the younger years that one can finish his/her homework during school hours, and that “canceling” normal periods is something that should not be considered ordinary. A few students agreed with the opinion that too many important lessons were missed; they believe that that is one of the main reasons why so many students are in favour of learning commons. A Year 11 student told us that “in the first month of school, I missed half of my chemistry classes because learning commons took place during those periods”.
This leads to the question: should the school keep learning commons, which could help some students finish their homework at school, or should they cancel the program to make sure students stop missing the classes on their timetables? Overall, the student body seems to lean towards the idea that learning commons is a good thing, although some believe that its timing is causing some issues.
