Just this year, The Village School switched the course “Advisory” to “CAPD,” College and Personal Development. This required course has been marketed as a way to improve student mental health through the new “Character Strong” curriculum. While it’s great that the school is trying to target mental health and help students create a better relationship with learning, the course requires students to have completed at least 80% of the assignments to pass. This is something many students struggle with due to missing a day of school, resulting in a low grade for the class. Having CAPD count as an actual grade is hurting students’ GPAs, as well as taking away a time students previously used as a study hall.
So, why the change? “We felt that advisory needed a new, better focus before it was a lot of, well, we’ll have lessons about this, we’ll have lessons about that, but there was no real continuity to the types of lessons that we were having,” said social-emotional counselor Rayla Willis. “We kind of knew that we wanted to utilize that time to help students with their mental wellbeing and skills that you get outside the academic classroom,” said Ms. Willis. As we hear from administration, we see that there is more of a point to CAPD than most students originally thought. The message behind exploring mental health and well-being while simultaneously addressing coping and stress does impact students- but only ones who are willing to let it help them. While protecting student’s mental health is a great initiative, there should be a balance between these lessons, and what students want – like study halls. If you’re teaching a lesson about study skills, the next advisory should be a study hall to use those methods. If you keep giving students lessons that they’ll skip, hate, and complain about, there isn’t going to be any effect on them. There are a lot of benefits to “Character Strong”, like building good habits for mental health and well-being for students’ futures, but many students still think they would benefit more without lessons, and possibly even going outdoors and reconnecting with nature. “CAPD was mainly an opportunity for me to study, while this year it’s mostly like activities that the school gives me, so I don’t have any time to study there,” said sophomore Mark Tripulskyi.
Bombarding students with assignments that talk about stress and time management in a course previously used as a study hall, does the opposite. “I’d rather return to what CAPD was last year,” said sophomore Maria Antunes. “Although I understand the point of “Character Strong,” people just get tired of doing the lessons, and they don’t even do them to their full potential.” Last year, CAPD was more study-focused, and more beneficial to students because they felt like they were using their time more efficiently. “I have not benefited from these character-strong lessons at all,” said sophomore Salma Ortega. “I feel like if this was in middle school, I would be okay with it because I was little, and I feel it would benefit the students more, but this is high school,” said Ortega. “Character Strong” benefits middle schoolers more, because they are still developing, thus it’s easier to build study habits for high school. Understandably, mental health is essential, but it would be better to offer workshops that are sign-up only, or send out links and videos so that students who want the help can benefit from it, and other students can keep their study halls to complete their work.
CAPD should stay as a pass-fail class, and shouldn’t be a class that affects your GPA. It should also have a balance between quick and effective lessons as well as study halls where students can get things done.
