In the LHS perspective

For 20 Fridays during tutorial, students at LHS will enter a classroom for a 35-minute lesson. However, students aren’t in an academic class; they’re in Homeroom.

Instead of a third tutorial on those days, everyone attends Homeroom, where students are given the opportunity to build relationships with peers and teachers. It is similar to a normal class in which students are expected to attend, but differs because this is a time where students “de-stress.”

LHS sophomore Aayushi Jain , looks forward to the experience even though she was not completely aware of what Homeroom is going to entail.

“We only have two rules for homeroom: You can’t use your phone and no academics,” Jain said. “You spend time with the people in your class, do team-building activities and class teamwork activities.”

Jain hopes the consistency of the Homerooms will build a bond between the people she encounters.

“We’re introducing a way to make our campus more social and more friendly,” Jain said. “I think it’ll be a good experience and a good way to take a break from what we’re used to.”

LHS sophomore David Heydinger, however, thinks Homeroom will end up failing to bring LHS students together, instead referring to it as a “waste of time.”

“I can think of so many other things I could be doing instead of Homeroom,” Heydinger said. “I could be doing my homework. It would be even better if instead of Homeroom we just [got] out of school early, instead of talking and playing games with the teacher.”

LHS sophomore Alex Cheng expresses similar concerns, and feels like the time could be better spent. The other possible option for Homeroom time is a third tutorial, which Cheng says he would appreciate more.

“I’ve spent the last majority of tutorials to just study for tests and do homework, since I don’t have time after school,” Cheng said. “Most students are actually being productive during tutorial.”

Journalism teacher Josh Miller is, on the other hand, more supportive of the new Homeroom, and believes that it will help increase the number of students who have a positive connection with an adult on campus.  

“We’ve had surveys over the last few years to ask students, ‘Do you have an adult on campus that you would feel comfortable going to with an issue you needed to talk about?’” Miller said. “We wanted [the results] to be higher. As a teacher body and as a staff, we were like, ‘That needs to be higher.’ So we want to make that a goal.”

Additionally, Miller hopes that the Homeroom period will create a space where students can be honest with the teacher and themselves, due to the fact that Homeroom has one significant difference from other classes.

“[Homeroom]’s not graded,” Miller said. “Two months from now, I’m going to be walking around campus and I’m going to know an extra 25 students that don’t have a grade in my gradebook. I can just know them as people.”

Heydinger believes he will be able to warm up to the concept of Homeroom, but right now, he’s not satisfied. He admits that building those relationships with other students takes time, but to him it’s not worth the effort.

“Eventually Homeroom [will] be helpful,” Heydinger said, “but it’s going to take more than one session just to bring the Lynbrook students together. I just don’t think it’s worth taking 35 minutes out of our day because everybody is probably just going to talk to their friends during homeroom.”

Yet when Jain looks into the future of Homeroom, she hopes that it will alter LHS’s vibe by creating more of that positive interaction. However, she also recognizes the concerns of others.

“We know for sure not everyone is going to get their dream homeroom,” Jain said. “Not everyone’s going to get a terrible homeroom. It’s different for everybody else. I feel like there’s nothing we can do.  It’s almost like a fresh start, but we’re just trying something new.”

According to Miller, LHS spoke with a Midwest school in which the students turned a Homeroom style time into something they control, a step he hopes will happen at LHS.

“They were the ones planning what would happen, whether it was a guest speaker or a day where students were just exchanging between classrooms,” Miller said. “The students have actually took this time over, and they’re planning. So eventually, it would be cool if the students [at LHS] took more discipline on their own shoulders so that it matters to them.”

LHS’s campus has mixed opinions on the future of the Homeroom classes.  For those in favor, it’s a new experience where the campus can work on its own bonding.  For those against, it takes away time from a tutorial that students could use to further their academic achievements.  Jain looks forward to her Homeroom classes and is excited to see what they are about.

“I don’t know what to expect,” Jain said. “We have so many people in our grade that it’s hard to know what to expect. [Homeroom]’ll be something people look forward to, ‘Okay, guys, look, it’s Friday, we have Homeroom, we have half an hour where we don’t have to do work.’ We’re getting something that’s good for us [and] I’m excited to see how it goes.”