Homework “B4” Assemblies

The B4 Period Should Be Used To Get Work Done Rather Than To Sit Through Assemblies

Photo by Venlier Anh on Unsplash

There is much disagreement about what the “B4” period should be used for. The idea of the period is to give administrators the flexibility to do whatever activity they need with the goal of enriching the students. According to the Maclay School website, the B4 period, also known as community time, is intended to build community in the upper school. However, what they believe is enriching and interesting to students is often just boring and time-consuming. One potential activity of community time is assemblies; however, the general consensus among students is that these assemblies are unnecessary uses of time they could be using to be productive.

Depending on the topic, some material covered in assemblies has the ability to be explained briefly; however, presentations are often stretched out into hour-long ordeals that are difficult for teenagers to sit through. While these topics are important, there’s only so many points that can be made before the speaker sounds repetitive.

“Genuinely, I feel like most [assemblies] can be an email,” junior Will Hunkapillar said.

In addition, the Cartee Gym is not the most comfortable place to sit for an hour whether the presentation is interesting or not. Being squashed between a bunch of teenagers in gym bleachers is not the most pleasant experience and is not conducive to the active listening presenters desire.

“Sitting on the bleachers for a long period of time is not enjoyable,” sophomore Alexandra Holland said.

Students typically have more pressing things to do during this time, such as meeting with teachers and doing homework. It is especially frustrating for students when the topics of the assemblies are encouraging them to use their time wisely yet inhibiting their ability to do so. B4 and homeroom are blocks of valuable time that students should be able to depend on for getting work done.

“The general consensus I get from my homeroom students is that they would rather have that study time during B4,” upper school science teacher Lauren Soto said.

Regardless of students and faculty’s dislike for assemblies, there are times where the meetups are important in conveying information, such as monthly assemblies which keep the whole student body up to date on announcements and reminders. For this reason, one can argue that the importance of assemblies outweighs the importance of study time. However, these brief monthly check-ins are not what bothers students. They understand that these assemblies are necessary to keep them up to date about everything around the campus. The type of assembly that bothers students is the kind that unnecessarily takes up their time and repeats things they have heard many times before. These assemblies include presentations from outside speakers and lectures on how to maximize study time.

“Sometimes [assemblies] are good, like when we have the once a month meetings,” Holland said. “I don’t mind those for the upper school assemblies because normally teachers try to get those done quickly.”

A solution to this problem is to keep the assemblies that are necessary but stop other random assemblies that are unnecessary. If administrators are willing to make changes, it would benefit the whole student body by limiting workload while still providing students with necessary information.