This is my final blog post because as of today, kinda, my senior
project is over! How sad!! Tomorrow is the giant relay, which Ms. Post and I have
been tirelessly planning throughout my project! I hope you all come and
have an absolute BLAST!
So, to wrap up my
final post I just wanted to tell you all what my suggestions are for the house
system after 3 weeks of work, research and brainstorming!
My first and probably most important suggestion is to create
more houses. With 4 houses with 100 people in each right now it is just too
hard to organize and execute events that will engage or entertain the whole
house. If there were 8 houses with about 50 kids in each house the meetings
would improve, events would be more manageable and there would be less of a
bystander effect on the house system as a whole. My next big suggestion, which
relates to the last, is to have less leaders. There is an apparent bystander
effect on the leaders and things just aren’t getting done. With one senior, one
junior and one sophomore it would be a lot better. A single leader to rally the
troops and excite the house, one junior to be in charge of organization and one
sophomore apprentice would be best. My next suggestion would be to integrate a
peer buddy system into the house. I would love to see this buddy system between
juniors and freshmen so that the underclassmen had someone to look up to for
more than just a single year. Also, juniors are more engaged in the school
environment at the time the freshmen need help, whereas the seniors have
developed senioritis. The buddies would serve as a guiding light to look up to,
do a holiday gift exchange, help with scheduling and be a friend to the buddy.
My next suggestion is that teachers should always be assigned to the same house
and legacies should always be honored. These things create momentum for the
house system and would make teachers and students more engaged. My next suggestion
is to give students some choice in what house they end up in. I would love to
see a survey attached to freshmen course registration that asks them which of
the house service initiatives they are most interested in. My last suggestion
is to have the House Leader elections at the same time as Senate elections.
Right now house leaders appear to be lesser leaders than the Senators because
people who lose Senate races very often run to be House Leaders. This stigma is
very impactful and hurtful for the house system as a whole. Overall, I think
the most important thing that needs to change is the engagement and enthusiasm
of the leaders themselves. They are the heart and soul of the system. Their
enthusiasm (or their lack of) has the ability to make or break the entire
system.
THANKS MS. THOMPSON FOR ALL YOUR HELP ALONG THE WAY!
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