Distrust in students causes drastic changes to FIT system
October 16, 2017
Flexible Instructional Time. That’s what FIT is supposed to stand for. Akins recently got a massive change in how FIT functions and the actual title behind the acronym simply doesn’t apply anymore. Students now have to go to specific FIT classes everyday with few exceptions. So it’s more like Forced Instructional Time.
Last year, FIT was for catching up on whatever you needed to. Teachers would create classes in the FIT portal for students to sign up and go to if they needed to. Each student was responsible for signing up for the appropriate FIT class and showing up and doing whatever work they needed to.
Teachers even had the ability to force assign specific students to their FIT classes if they were desperately behind on work. If someone is assigned to FIT by a teacher when they looked in the FIT portal it showed what room they were supposed to go to and have no option for the student to change where they would go.
Most students did what they were supposed to and went wherever they needed help. They used that time to catch up on work they might have missed if they were absent, or finish a test. Students could also use that time in areas that weren’t their normal classes like going to talk to their counselor and/ or go to the C.C.C. and use FIT time in places they needed to go but were unable to before or after school.
To be fair, some students didn’t always use FIT appropriately. Some didn’t sign up for a FIT class at all and still others never logged into the FIT portal to see if they had been assigned and thus would never go to required FIT sessions. Others, hid in the bathrooms or just went to their favorite teacher without even looking at the FIT portal. These examples don’t apply to everyone but they were enough to make the administration completely reevaluate FIT.
This year instead of having free will and taking responsibility for our own actions we as students must follow an alternating weekly schedule, which forces students to go to each of their various eight teachers at least once over a two-week period.
For example, if you are required to go to 3rd Period FIT, but you missed a major test in 7th period that your teacher can’t let you take during your next class time, you have to go sit in the gym for FIT and wait until next Thursday to take a test. By then it might be too late. Oh well, according to this new system. It’s your problem. For students with classes like gym or dance in certain periods there is not enough time in FIT to dress out, do exercise, and get dressed again. So spending an entire FIT in those classes simply does not make sense, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
However, many people don’t know that attendance isn’t taken during FIT anymore. Without the FIT portal there is no way to hold students accountable for where they are. So a student can now hide in the bathrooms, stay in their favorite classes, or go off campus with no penalty at all. The main problems that caused the change in FIT have not only not actually addressed, but in fact made even worse. Teachers and administration do not have a simple way to reliably track were a student is during school hours is a legitimate concern.
All this new system has done is worsen the problems from before and taken away students’ ability to make decisions for themselves. With the constant announcements and forced schedule, students have been relegated to being treated like children, again.
The old system for FIT was flawed for sure and some students didn’t respect it. However, at least there was some way to keep up with where students were and students could make decisions — good or bad — for themselves. There will never be full cooperation in a student body as large as ours. The bad decisions of a few are not a just cause to treat the whole student body with the same amount of trust you would give a group of preschoolers on Hold-A-Ring walking leashes.
We at the Eagle’s Eye respect the administration’s attempt to get students to be more respectful of teachers time, but the current Forced Instruction Time system feels like a step in the wrong direction. We believe it is better to fix the Flexible Instruction Time system instead of throwing it out altogether.
