Guidance Specialist Editorial

by Kim Ngai and Sabrina Syed, News editors

 

It is only the first day of school, and students already are complaining about their schedules.

“I mean, the guidance staff has only been preparing for the new school year since February. How long does it take to sort 3,000 kids? Six months? I bet I could do that in six days.”

Hey, all you have to do is satisfy every single student’s requirements and requests.

Oh yeah, and then make sure each teacher has a total of 180 students, a limit of five periods a day, and a maximum of 37 students per class.

Easy smeasy.

Of course, Superman can do this organization in six days, but to any mere mortal, it takes much longer than that.

That’s why we have a guidance team here on the Fountain Valley campus. A team of Clark Kent clones, you could say.

There are four guidance specialists and a head of guidance who work from February to October trying to sort 3,000 students into the appropriate classes. And this organization is separate from their year-round jobs of counseling students.

Even though creating schedules isn’t easy, students can’t help but complain when schedules are messed up.

I mean, come on, I wouldn’t want to have a teacher I didn’t like either. And then there are all those problems of being put in the wrong class.

It takes one click to mix up a schedule, but three weeks to fix it. How does that happen?

On top of that, students have to deal with frustrated specialists. Trust me, it’s not easy trying to get a schedule change.

Students think the specialists have it easy, and specialists think students don’t understand how hard they work. Now if it’s a known fact that the guidance specialists are doing their jobs, and that students have legitimate complaints, who is to be blamed?  What’s the solution?

Specialists and students need to relax, take a step back, and try to understand each other.  We all share a common goal—making the best schedules for everyone—and guidance specialists and students should work together to achieve that goal.