Starting next school year, instead of being randomly grouped into homerooms, students will be sorted into differently-themed “dens”. On Monday, students chose which theme they would like to be a part of for the entirety of the coming school year. With this new change, students chose from 84 themes, such as Disney, Padres, or Star Wars. They will pick their first, second, and third options without knowing which teachers are administering each homeroom. Only a certain number of students per grade will be in each Homeroom to ensure a balance between classes. Each homeroom will have two necessary rules to follow: no phones allowed in class and no changing from one homeroom to another.
One reason for this change, according to Assistant Principal Shannon Parker, is that faculty members observe that students rarely socialize with one another in the current homeroom format. She said that going virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic and the bell schedule change both contributed to homeroom’s diminished social atmosphere. For Westview’s first 20 years–through the 2021-2022 school year–Homeroom ran three days a week, but changed to only two days during the 2022-2023 school year.
“It’s been five years since the pandemic, but we have been struggling to build back the culture of homeroom,” Parker said. “In 2022-2023, the bell schedule changed. We did away with the Wednesday homeroom, and we added the Wednesday Wolverine Time, which has been nothing but a welcome addition by students and staff. However, the unintended consequence of that was now only having two days to build up a community within homerooms became really challenging.”
Homeroom is meant to offer a space for non-academic connection, Parker said. Interacting face-to-face with others allows students to build relationships outside of their grade and with teachers.
“The overall purpose of homeroom is connection,” Parker said. “Years ago, when homeroom was first established, there were processes and conduits to building relationships, [but] over time, those went away. We used to take attendance for our kids in class, and if you were in my homeroom and you had to go to a dentist appointment, you had to come find me to get a pass, and I’d be the one interfacing and talking to your parents, but all of that went away.”
Westview is the only high school in the district to have a time designated for homeroom, making the class unique to Westview’s schedule.
Principal Ernie Remillard said that when faculty observed the decline of community in homeroom classes, teachers and staff decided to work together and come up with ideas for productive changes.
“We went through a whole design cycle as a staff this year and worked during our professional development days,” Remillard said. “We started to think about the number of [homeroom] days per week, if we had homeroom five days a week, four days a week, or three days a week. This was really the first starting point to think about how do we build better connections around our campus? So one of the things that came out of the different groups was the thematic grouping of students to build some more interest in homeroom.”
Remillard said that the faculty expects to see some challenges in the new homeroom layout and are working ahead to address potential issues.
“When you test anything new, you always come up against unforeseen challenges and obstacles,” Remillard said. “We’re trying to think through as many [challenges] as we can and be as proactive as we can. It’s our first year testing this and trying this, and so it is going to feel a little bit bumpy at times. We’ll just have to continue handling it as we go, and moving through as we go. I do think that it’s going to be a lot of work on the back end, trying to balance out these homerooms. It’s also going to be new for staff, finding their balance of their theme and what they do for the 40 minutes a week. Right now, my biggest encouragement to staff, students, and communities, is to just all be on board with it and open to trying something new.”
Parker said teachers and staff hope to see the new homeroom changes revive Westview’s culture of connectivity.
“Westview was founded on interconnected relationships and building those relationships between staff and students,” Parker said. “We want [homeroom] to be a spot of connection. We don’t want just your academic courses to be whom you connect with on campus, and [we] still value being able to connect with other adults on campus, and that happens in homeroom”
