Hilltopper 101 Review
Over the past ten weeks, the freshmen have had to attend new-student programming, Hilltopper 101 every Thursday X block. During Hilltopper 101, the freshmen class is split into groups based on our school’s core values: honor, respect, community, personal growth, challenge, and Worcester Academy’s motto, Achieve the Honorable. In those groups, the freshmen have 30-minute lessons about school-related subjects such as learning about personal values or about the bystander effect. Many of the students, including those who attended middle school, have had these lessons in the past. But overall, all the students have their own opinions about what they think about the programming, and what they think should change.
Some students see Hilltopper 101 as another Health class. Many of the topics we are reviewing are the same things we have just learned about in Health and Wellness. A solution to this issue is if the topics differentiate more from each other. This would result in more variety for the freshman’s education on these non-academic topics. For example, lessons, such as information concerning affinity groups and using our school website, MyHilltop, would have been more productive at the beginning of the year instead of being used as Hilltopper programming.
In addition, many freshmen believe that if we were in a single group, the session would be more interesting and successful in creating stronger bonds within the class. As a teacher pointed out, the main point of Hilltopper 101 is to build community. The first Hilltopper 101 session was an activity that the whole grade participated in together prior to splitting into groups. Essentially, dividing the grade makes it hard for students to interact with each other.
Others think of Hilltopper 101 as unnecessary and find that the period could be used for other activities, such as study hall. This change could help students transition into an increased course load and complete assignments in a timely manner. However, utilizing this period as a study hall could be unproductive, as some students don’t take advantage of current blocks set aside for coursework and studying, and could result in unstructured free time.
A different use for the period could be for affinity groups, which are going on during the hour-long X block alongside Hilltopper 101 and thus have to be cut short. One student suggested that moving the Hilltopper activity would make more time for affinity groups. However, this would also be difficult as different X-block programming is organized according to the days of the week. Ultimately, the main goal of Hilltopper 101 is to build community among different groups of people within the freshman class, which affinity groups accomplish through their own activities, possibly more so than Hilltopper 101. This may suggest that this sense of community Hilltopper 101 tries to create is already present in Worcester Academy affinity groups.
Some teachers have also stated that they are willing to change the structure of the ninth-grade programming. Hilltopper 101 is already a revamp of the previous year’s Community and Culture, with some faculty seeing much more engagement in their current Hilltopper groups than in previous years. While understanding that Hilltopper 101 is a new program, some issues need to be worked out. Listening to student feedback may be one of the few ways to help solve these problems.
I hope that the points made in this article are considered when reviewing the work done in Hilltopper 101. There are certainly benefits to this programming, such as building a stronger community not only within the ninth grade but also within WA as a whole. However, there are still areas to improve within Hilltopper 101.