The students at Millard West High School have Quality Time every day except Thursday, where they go to a different room and learn about new ways to prepare for college. Quality Time allows you to see your peers and get work done, within a 10 minute period. On Thursdays, it is completely different.

College and Career Readiness is meant to give students a jump on their college preparation and help them plan for their futures. While these are the intentions, they aren’t the reality. The half hour period is useless and doesn’t do what it is intended to.

At the start of CCR, teachers go over what is on the agenda for the day. A lot of this has to do with Naviance (a toolkit to help students beyond graduation) or taking short surveys about yourself. These are meant to be helpful, but don’t help students as much as the administration thinks. Many students don’t pay attention or rush through these, so they can play games or do other activities. During the videos the teachers show, many students are distracted on their phones or computer doing other things off task.

Many of the activities that go along with CCR are short surveys, active learning games, and filling out college paperwork. The surveys ask questions about the students’ wants and needs for school improvement, and they also ask personal questions. Most of the paperwork filled out is meant to improve students’ resumes or help them through scholarships.

During CCR last spring, there were several days where my class was given long surveys that asked personal questions. During these surveys many classmates and I would hurry through these and click random answers to get done faster. We were so focused on getting enough time to play a game on our phones, that we didn’t even bother to read the questions. Although we saw no harm in this, it hinders the school’s goal.

The school uses the surveys and classwork during CCR to try and help better school life. This would lead the administration to inaccurate results, causing even more change within the school that may not be wanted.

This should be replaced with regular Quality Time, which would give students more class time for studying or getting schoolwork done. On Thursdays, students’ classes are shortened due to CCR being longer, resulting in them obtaining less material. This change would be beneficial to both the students and teachers, allowing them to complete more tasks. With more class time where students are assisted by their teacher, this change would give them the opportunity to ask more questions and get help.

No matter how people look at it, during QT and CCR, there’s little to no work being done. Teachers should acknowledge this, and look back at the work completed. This is another flaw in the school’s plan, because students hurry through the work, they are not getting accurate results. 

While CCR does help teach some students valuable skills to help them move on in their educational career, the period is misused and takes away time that could be used in academic classes.

Instead of the school giving the students a free half hour every Thursday to mess around or be off task, they should change it to normal QT. This would give 20 less minutes for students to slack off and 20 more minutes for them to study, better their learning and apprehend new material with more class time.