With the new 2025-2026 school year comes a never before seen addition to the Westminster students’ schedule: daily Connect periods. Now high school students will be given more time in their day to work on homework, rest, or hang out with friends. In previous years, students have mentioned their concerns about the homework load, and its inability to work with their independent schedules and extracurricular activities. Demetri Crooks, senior and STUCO officer, was one of those students, and felt strongly that there needed to be a change:
“At first I looked at my homework load, and I sort of felt like I was just drowning in homework and I didn’t have time to do it, and at the same time my pastor was talking a lot about resting in the Lord, and I did not feel like I could do it with my schedule.”
Crooks’ realization that his busy schedule was preventing him from spending time with God inspired him to try to help alleviate the student body’s homework load. In order to get this change in action Crooks used his resources as a STUCO officer to form a committee to tackle the issue. The first thing he did was collect data from students:
“I spent kind of all of sophomore year running the numbers figuring out the average amounts of homework for some in a lot of honors and AP classes, or a lot of regular classes […] One morning I went with the whole STUCO committee, and we went to administration, and we gave them a presentation on all the data in our findings.”
After collecting data and showing it to administration, they were able to leave a couple ideas on how the school could make changes to accommodate the students. Over the course of this last year, the administration has had time to work on what exact changes they would want to make, the result of that being Connect. Dan Burke, 11/12th Grade Principal, was a major part of the team that helped to make these changes. When it comes to what the new Connect means for the student body, Burke said:
“That was the idea of why we would do it every day. Students have time to do their homework, they could circle back to a teacher that they already had in the morning […] the other thing, too, is that most students are involved in extracurriculars, so they have absolutely zero time to make up quizzes and stuff that they miss due to absences or field trips.”
With this new time to work on upcoming assignments and prepare for tests and quizzes, students are given more flexibility to work alongside their extracurriculars which also includes time to rest in the Lord. With this new time also comes more opportunities to relax and socialize. Burke said:
“We wanted opportunities for kids to make choices about how they use time. We’re building these common spaces as places where students can be green-lighted to go, and as long as they behave themselves there, they can pretty much do whatever they want […] let’s make this feel more like a college instead of a prison.”
All of these changes are allowing for Westminster to better prepare students for the freedom of college, and use their time wisely. However, with great freedom comes great responsibility. Burke said:
“This system will reward kids who are responsible with more freedom to choose who they want to use their time, and then kids who need more accountability will not be green-lighted to those spaces.”
This necessity of responsibility will help students mature and grow over the course of their time at Westminster as they continue to gain more and more freedom. Overall the addition of this new Connect time will greatly benefit students not only academically, but also in responsibility as they gain more freedom during this daily Connect time.
