In past years, scheduling had always been quite the event. There was an entire day planned out for counselors to come to classrooms and hand out important-looking sheets of paper. Students would travel from period to period, asking for signatures from their teachers to approve their choices on the following year’s classes.

Things were tricky in certain classes, like math, where prerequisites were required. A student may walk into geometry class, expecting to move on to precalculus next year and, instead, sign up for trigonometry.

Things happen, grades change, and just like that scheduling changed as well.

This year, things are a bit different. Instead of having a day dedicated to scheduling, it will happen in a sequence of meetings.

This new system of scheduling allows the counselors to have more time dedicated to each student, allows the parents to have a say, and doesn’t take away class time during the process.

Sophomores and juniors will meet with their parents and counselor on a designated day to discuss scheduling. For juniors, this process was completed before Christmas break. Sophomores meetings will occur during this semester.

For freshmen, it’s a different story. Since they all currently share the same counselor, as they transition into sophomore year, they will be assigned to their SMCHS alpha-counselor, whom they will have for the remainder of high school.

For the incoming sophomores, their schedules are a bit simpler than incoming juniors and seniors since they don’t have as many classes to choose from other than their electives.

A freshmen in Biology H, will go on to Chemistry H. But a sophomore in Chemistry H could go onto AP Biology, Chemistry SL IB, Physics HL IB, or any of the other chosen science classes.

Situations like these are exactly what is discussed in the counselor meetings.

Parents are present at a majority of the meetings, however, if a student knows exactly what their plan is and has discussed it with their family, then the parent need not come.

During the meetings, counselors will do a grade check. This will show the student where they are on graduation track and what classes would be the best to take in the coming year.

As it is widely known, junior year is crucial to college applications, therefore attending the sophomore meetings is incredibly important.

Fair warning to the future seniors: senior year classes do matter. Colleges look favorably upon applicants with a challenging curriculum.

No matter what year a student is in, scheduling is important. This new system of scheduling allows the process to be done earlier, and hopefully will be a more efficient and effective process.

However, just as most things, the scheduling system is always a work in progress and the counseling team is working hard each year to help the students be the best they possibly can.