This year for high school, the deans and principal decided to do Cougar Time instead of a Socratic seminar for 9th graders. This isn’t much of a change, because we had something like Cougar Time before in 8th grade. For upperclassmen, it is a little different for them since they had Socratic seminars last year and the years before. I interviewed upperclassmen Finn and Noah about what they think of Cougar Time.
At the start of the interview I asked what they thought of Cougar Time and some pros and cons of Cougar Time, to which the upperclassmen said that they liked Cougar Time so far and the time length was OK. The upperclassmen found that Cougar Time was a useful use of their time so they can work on homework and not worry about other things. They also liked that the Cougar Time put them with kids of their own grade.
Some of the cons the upperclassmen stated as their opinions are that they do not really like that the Cougar Time is shorter than academic seminar; they feel that they have less time to get homework done. They do like that it is not much different from an academic seminar, and that it’s basically the same thing but shorter.
In the interview Finn said, “When we used to have the seminar, the teachers would pick us, and now you can kind of pick where you wanna go, the teachers can still pick you, but you can go wherever you want.” Noah also said, “That freedom is nice, I do think that gives a little bit of justification for the regular occurrence of it.”
The upperclassmen do not like that they do not get to move around freely. They do not get to move from room to room, they have to stay in class. They said it is not easy to get homework done either, because they can’t go to other classes to ask teachers for help or their opinion on something. In the interview Noah said, “It is a little bit restricting, because of the hall passes now this year, usually you would be able to go down to another teacher freely during that time but now it’s kind of a hassle with the hall passes.”
In conclusion, the upperclassmen I interviewed seem to like Cougar Time so far except for the few things they said that they would change.
