At Panther Creek High School, instead of having lunch for less than thirty minutes, we have an hour lunch called power hour. During power hour you can do many things such as eat lunch with your friends, go to tutorials, go to clubs, and more. This is something special to our school because most schools have block-scheduled lunches which will only give you thirty minutes or less to eat lunch. This is often not enough time for everyone to get their food and eat. “I do believe that every school should utilize power hour because it gives the students opportunities to manage their time. Students can choose to have tutorials during the school day and that way they can improve their academics or they can get involved in extracurriculars like basketball or something fun. It also gives them the opportunity to spend time with their friends. When my children were little, they did not have the opportunity to have lunch with their friends and power hour gives you the opportunity to have the social component with your friends, the academic component with tutorials, and the fun component of going to do extracurriculars like basketball or something fun and stimulating” Dr. Nicole Bradford, an administrator at Panther Creek High School said.
Power hour is very new to our school, there will always be constant changes to make it fit for everything and to keep lunches from being chaotic.”There’s much more people that joined the school this year, so there are a lot more rules for power hour like cleaning after ourselves better and attending tutorials. It’s a little more strict this year to be honest because last year, it was a new school, and not a lot of people with each grade but now there’s so many more people” Rida Rabbani, a senior at Panther Creek High School said.
As much as Power Hour benefits the students, it also helps the teachers. “Power hour helps me because it’s a time that I get to work with the students one on one, so that tutorial period is a nice time that I get students to come over and get the help they couldn’t get in class.” Ihuoma Nwosu, a math teacher at Panther Creek High said.
Power hour is something that almost everyone is grateful for in the school. This leads to some students becoming reckless as they leave their trash on the ground, run around the school, and don’t go to mandatory tutorials which are things that could lead to power hour being taken away. “If data from our reports show that grades are not improving and students are not positively utilizing the free time that they have, then I think that might be the time that we need to look at power hour and say, is this really helping our students? Our ultimate goal is to make sure each and every one of our students are successful” Dr. Nicole Bradford said. Power Hour is not a right, It’s a privilege, and if we keep cleaning up after ourselves and keep being responsible for our grades then we will keep Power Hour for the rest of the school year. The choice belongs to the student body.
