001Right. >> Hello. Uh, I'm Scott Smith. I'm the superintendent with Cedar Springs Public Schools. Welcome to the first episode of Rumor Has It. I'm Eddie John's, assistant principal at the high school. >> And I'm John Williamson, junior student here at the high school. Junior student extraordinaire. John. Oh, yeah. All right. Giddy up. Here we go. Uh, today we're going to talk about sore time. Yeah. Talk to us about the concept, Mr. John's how it got started. Uh what are some of the goals? What are some of the intended outcomes? Uh and how are students using this time uh to make their uh their experience here at Cedar Springs High School a more successful one? >> Uh sore time, we have not had sore in the past couple years. And sore time really is this idea.
002Some places may call it a wind time or an advisory time, but sore time is a chance in the day twice a week for 30 30 minutes to have intervention extension or a chance to, you know, get caught up on what students need to get caught up on. So, some students have used it for quiz retakes, test retakes, studying. Other students have used it for, you know, they are caught up, so they're using it a chance to reconnect or get ahead. Some AP students are using it for that added practice. Yeah. just a lot of different things that can be done during that sore time and it came out of the the need we saw to give that time. I mean time is a very valuable gift, >> right? >> So time within the day
003so students aren't having to come in at lunch or after school to to make up work to get extra support they need, but just multiple times a week to have support needed to be successful. And we talk all the time about pursuing our true personal best. And sore time is a great example of that or could be an exemplar of that where students are choosing what they need. They're using the time to pursue their personal best in a variety of ways. >> So um so John as a student Yes. Um >> what is your thoughts? What are you hearing from your classmates about sore time? I I it's really helped like like for doing test retakes like if I do bad on a test or if I miss a test it's it's really good to
004like be able to have that time to retake it or to study for an upcoming test. >> My only issue with sore time is I I think sometimes there's there are times where I'm in sore time and I'm not really doing anything. I'm just kind of hanging out talking to friends or some honestly sometimes I'm taking a nap. But I feel two days a week or even three days a week as you said, I don't I I wonder how how necessary that is. >> Mhm. >> Like is it really needed two times a week or three times a week? Like how much of a change would it be if it was only once? >> Yeah. >> So your classes are shorter during the day, correct? Because of sore time. So do you miss that five
005minutes or or four minutes, whatever it is per class? >> Yeah. I I almost wonder if like how much it benefits us to like cut that class time to have the sore time if eventually I'm not doing anything >> in the sore time. >> So, um Mr. John's, what would you say to a student like John? Are there other opportunities that he can uh pursue, take advantage of to make that sore time experience be more beneficial? >> Yeah, for sure. And I'm glad you brought that up. Um, just some of the like numbers that we look at on the back end of things is when sessions come out, there's always the opportunity for teachers to enroll students in a session or for students to pick sessions before they're autoenrolled. And um, pretty much every single
006week or every session, there's about 150 200 students that don't pick a session. So to me, you know, another thing that we talk about is empowerment and ownership. And when when students aren't choosing where they are utilizing that time, it does feel like maybe a missed opportunity for for either learning about a new elective or an experience, you know, so like we have a phenomenal educator in Miss Swift that does art class and art club and that sore time is a chance where a student might not have anything to do with art, but they're like, I don't know, I'll do a a sore time kind of non-committal. I'll do a half hour, see if I enjoy art. Or um I've wondered about statistics versus algebra 2. Or maybe I'm I'm concerned about AP pre-calc, so
007I'd like to see what that's like. So you can use small chunk of time to go check that out. There might not be a need academically for intervention or support, but just an opportunity to say like, yeah, maybe this is something that is in my future I don't even know about yet, right? >> So instead of those times where it's like, I don't have anything to do. I'll just chill in the cafeteria. That could be an opportunity to say, "Yeah, I could spend a Tuesday figuring out if this is something I want to do in the future or not." >> Yeah. I have a I have a couple things to build on to what Mr. John said. For >> sure. Um, first, I I didn't know we we were able to just go into like
008any class. Like I didn't know I I assumed we just had to do classes that we were like already have. >> So, I I didn't know I could just sign up for like an art class and then try that out for for 30 minutes. >> Yeah. Great clarifier. And some some teachers can restrict to only their students. So that makes a lot of sense for one of the core classes. >> You know, if I've got Mr. V for science, maybe I just want to see Mr. V for science. So sometimes that happens, but a lot of the sessions are open. So yeah, that's an opportunity and maybe a great learning point from this podcast is any student can take a look at all those sessions that are available and you could pick if there's open
009space to sign up for them. So, um, thinking ahead to 2627, um, the new school year, we're going to run sore time year two version two, uh, 2.0. It's an opportunity for us to make some adjustments. >> So, um, John, one of the things that you're saying is we it would be helpful, um, to be more clear in how students could really manage and flex that time to their advantage. Um can you think of some other things either um from your perspective Mr. John's or from your perspective uh John how would you go about uh what are some other things that we'd want to really um initiate or implement in order to make sore time 2.0 I know better than it was this year. >> But I think I think we really need to like
010dive in and look like statistically how how much it's helping cuz I know there was a newsletter that was uploaded and it said what 60% growth since releasing sore time. My whole wondering is do we need to have it two times a week, three times a week? >> Sure. Right now, the failure rate is decreasing and it's kind of each two week check-in has been consistently getting smaller and smaller. So, that tells me yes, we should keep it, >> but it also does say like we're heading in the right direction. So, in the future, do we necessarily need that time? I don't know. But right now, it does appear to be >> providing that another avenue for more success with our current classes. So, and you know, early talking about maybe you don't have that
011intervention time need, but through for our whole building, it definitely seems like a net positive for other people staying caught up. Yeah. So, um, no, we're definitely considering all that stuff. This year, we dove right in. We had like sore, sore, sore, sore, right? Those first two weeks, we are planning on tapering that back a little bit just to help students get in the groove and teachers get in the groove of school and um then kind of trickling into sore time. So it is more meaningful and that could should provide an opportunity to be more even more explicit about like the purpose the time to schedule. We did like a session on how to use RTI to schedule for sore time. We might be it might be a couple iterations of that to make sure
012students are really understanding the benefits of it and just truly walking through like no we're going to click on this button on you know your Canvas page or not canvas page your clever page click on this button and then here's how all the sessions look you get to pick a session just even that clarity and coming back throughout the year to it would probably be you know wise this was version 1.0 know and that seems to be an area where we can use some support is just recommunicating it over and over. >> Yeah. >> Till it becomes second nature. >> Um what other ways uh are you going to be looking Mr. John's to getting some additional feedback from students to make soar 2.0 better more impactful than soar 1.0? >> Yeah. So we've always
013encouraged teachers to do like an end of semester kind of feedback survey. some some take advantage of that at the toward the end of last year we had a similar thing just as a building. So I think as part of that this year getting that feedback probably just a Google form kind of as we get to those last few weeks of the school year >> you know what what was beneficial with sore time what could be improved just to then have that captured and help do some of our you know offseason planning in the summer for getting ready for next year. >> Got it. So, as we wrap up this uh edition of the podcast, uh taking the soreness out of sore time, you have any last minute thoughts uh that you want to share
014or reflections uh John from a student perspective? >> Yeah, I I think that it's really good that we touched up on the the fact that you can sign up for other classes. I think it's like I think we should emphasize that a little bit more cuz I I mean, I didn't know that we could sign up for whatever class we wanted. I mean, I know I have like a the option to sign up for a different class. I just assumed I wasn't able to because I'm not in that class. >> Sure. >> Yeah. I think we should really touch up on like the fact that you can sign up for like kind of whatever is available. Um I think that could encourage students to sign up a little more >> because I know we have
015like you said like 200 students a week that don't sign up. >> I mean I'm I can't say I'm not guilty. Um but yeah, I I it's it's really helpful sometimes with test retakes and stuff like that, but there is sometimes where I feel like I'm not doing anything. >> Yeah. So, you know, life is is really best lived when you have um input on how it how it plays out, right? And you know, sore time really is a neat opportunity for students to um have that ability to uh make some choices >> around how they're going to use that time. Am I going to take a nap? Am I going to chat with pals? Am I going to >> retake a test? You know, all of those things are opportunities, choices that we make.
016um we can either use it use the time to benefit uh us academically or uh yeah sometimes there's benefit to some social growth. Sometimes there's benefit to being able to to nail down a project. Um, and that the teams that we brought to some of the other schools, that was like eye opening and kind of enlightening that the the general tone for those students that do maybe sign up to do a just silent reading or they just want to go spend 30 minutes with some friends and catch up. Like that's okay to them. And that was like mindblowing because Yeah. But high school's tough and sometimes what students need is just a chance to decompress and you know connect with human beings. So >> so if you're caught up on all your stuff that's kind
017of the like yeah academically you're good you're set like just don't forget to spend some time being a student too. So >> every single sort time maybe not but every so often that's a good thing to do for sure. >> Yeah. Uh thank you so much John. appreciate the fact that you're here. Uh on my left, Mr. John, we appreciate you coming down and sharing some wisdom, insight on sore time. That's a wrap on uh rumor has it uh version or episode one and uh tune in for future episodes where we uh really talk about some key issues that impact the lives of students right here at Cedar Springs High