Remembering to sign up for Tutorial last minute on a Thursday night. Illustration courtesy of sophomore Kaila Foley.
Starting the 2022-2023 school year, San Luis Obispo High School students had to attend an extra period after fourth period called “Tutorial” on Mondays. This was implemented to give students extra time to make up any work they missed, or get any work done that they need, but not everyone was a fan of it.
Students are able to sign up for Tutorial on a website called FlexiSCHED on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but once that time period is up, students are stuck with either being defaulted into their third period class or being put in whatever class their teacher chooses for them.
“I’ve liked [Tutorial], I normally go to a class where I can do my homework or if I need to study for a test I go to study and just talk to a teacher of that class,” said sophomore Dante Freeman-Garcia.
This was the main purpose of Tutorial, to give students a period of time to get things done or to make up work that they missed from being absent instead of having to come into that classroom at lunch or afterschool.
However, most students didn’t often need this time and so they needed to find something else to do during this required free period.
“I only ever needed to use Tutorial for it’s purpose once or twice. Besides that, I would just use my phone or talk to friends,” said 2023 SLOHS graduate Paul Miser.
Because of this large array of students simply not caring or forgetting about Tutorial on the following Monday, many are defaulted into their third period class and just hang out there. There has been talk and rumors about a change depicting a consequence to defaulting without choice for the 2023-2024 school year, such as lunch cleanup or some other negative duty.
“I think that would be a really bad change. That would just serve to punish people who wanted to default by choice, forgot to choose a class, or didn’t feel the need to go to a Tutorial workshop,” said Miser.
Given the talk about “forgetting to sign up,” students have asked to extend the sign up period from Wednesday and Thursday up until Friday, or even the weekend.
“I never realize until Monday [to sign up], and I have to go to a teacher to switch it, or I have to text people where they are and figure out where I’m supposed to go,” said junior Tamar Roide.
This change to Tutorial’s foundation would give students more time and opportunity to figure out what class they want to sign up for and what they need to make up.
SLOHS will continue using Tutorial in the following school years and will hopefully have it adapt to students’ needs so that it is something that everyone can find useful.
