The way tutorial is currently setup is ineffective, and the tutorial period at Woodside needs to be restructured. It’s supposed to be a productive time where students are encouraged to complete assignments and tests, but a lot of students don’t use it for that anyway.
At Woodside, we have tutorials every day for forty minutes, except for Wednesdays. I usually complete my homework or tests during tutorial, but if I don’t have anything to do, I just sit there. From my experience, this is what a lot of other students do as well, regardless of whether they have work or not. This is not the students’ fault, but the fault of the way tutorial is set up. Tutorial is not set up in an engaging enough way.
Other schools in surrounding areas use their version of tutorial much differently. For example at Menlo Atherton, they have something called “flex time,” which is pretty much their version of tutorial. They only have flex time twice a week, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, for thirty minutes. I think Woodside would benefit from a schedule similar to this.
Additionally, the restriction on moving from class to class during tutorial is very limiting for students. Currently, you can go to any class you want during tutorial, but once you choose a class you have to stay there the whole duration of tutorial. I think this is pretty pointless. If you miss a day of school and want to stop by math and biology to make up for missing work, you can’t. You would have to choose one. That doesn’t make any sense because what if you just had to pick up some papers for biology? Now you have the rest of the tutorial stuck there when you could be in math instead.
Another point I want to bring up is the length of tutorial–it’s forty minutes long. That means you have to stay in the same class for forty minutes regardless of if you have work from another class that you want to go to. Not to mention that forty minutes is a long time to sit around if you have no work. I think there should be an option for other enrichment activities during this time, like clubs or games with your friends. This is especially true since nowadays the attention spans of everyone has dwindled. According to the American Physiological Society, students’ attention spans during lectures average ten to fifteen minutes. On average, students here have four classes a day. One forty-five minute class and three ninety-minute classes. Then we have a tutorial for another forty minutes in between these classes. I think there should be an option to rest during this period. There is already so much learning expected in a day, that a break wouldn’t be too much to ask.
Overall, I think tutorial should be changed for all the reasons I have listed above. The way it is currently set up isn’t a productive use of time. From my experience, the majority of students don’t use the time for what it’s intended for. That’s why we should change the guidelines of tutorial. We should be able to move around and talk to people. It should be a productive space for students regardless of what they are doing, either working on school work or just using the time to relax.
