Second+Step

As announcements come on Wednesday mornings everyone dreads what comes after. Every Wednesday morning in homeroom we do Second Step with our homeroom teacher. Not many of us like to do Second Step because we already know the stuff that they are teaching us. Second Step is this program that we are required to do every Wednesday morning. We talk about bullying and all different kinds of problems in school. Every year we learn the same things over and over again. I asked a couple people what they thought about Second Step and they had mostly the same thoughts as me. I asked Emma Larivee and Livie Maher what they thought. Both girls are in the same homeroom as me and have to deal with Second Step every Wednesday. Emma Larivee 8th grade on Oasis team said, “Second step in home room is kind of boring because I have been learning about bullying since I first got into school. I already know about prejudice, and stereotyping, so these lessons aren't really helping me out. I don't know about other people, but the atmosphere hasn't changed, and my opinion about bullying haven't changed at all. I still know that it's wrong, so for me, this is a waste of time.” Livie Maher 8th grade on Oasis team said “I think that Second Step is pointless. (Like a broken pencil) We shouldn't be spending valuable time on something we learn every year. No matter if we learn it a million times I feel it's a waste of time and we should be getting more core class time or something worthy out of it. I think that homeroom ois begin with is pretty pointless too because it's 8 minutes we are waiting of our day.” I agree with with Emma and Livie and I'm sure a lot of other kids in our school agrees with them too. Pretty much how the morning goes is we listen to our homeroom teacher Señora Currier talk about what we are going to do. She talks and we watch videos about bullying and stereotyping. After we do that we do an activity with the people at our table. For example we took markers of different colors and sorted them into different groups. I thought that this was the dumbest activity that we had ever done for Second Step. My group sorted the markers into different colors and then a mismatch pile. The first mod of the day is algebra for me and other people in my homeroom. As soon as we leave homeroom on Wednesdays we are always arguing about how Second Step is pointless. Our algebra teacher Ms.Snyder thinks it's funny how we are learning to be nice to each other in homeroom and then we come to her class arguing about how dumb it is! Anyway most people don't like Second Step but we have to deal with it and maybe we will actually learn something new that we didn't know.

Written By Hannah