As a student who is involved in many after school sports, one of the biggest worries for me is getting to the gym on time.
For cross country, you have to get to your locker, put your stuff up, and then get to the gym and change all in a short amount of time before the team leaves for practice. Surprisingly, one of the most time consuming parts of these steps is just coming from your seventh hour class, getting to your locker to get your stuff ready, and then making your way over to the gym.
One thing that would help us get to our after-school activities on time would be our 7th hour teachers allowing us to have our bags in their room with us.
If that were the case, then we could just go straight to our activities without any extra delays. Some teachers allow backpacks in their 7th hours, but most don’t.
Some teachers might feel that the bags would cause a distraction in their class. Either the students could put the bag by their chair and not mess with it, or the teacher could have a wall or corner where students could put their bags while they’re in class. I feel that having bags in classrooms would not be a distraction at all for most kids, as they are just there so the student won’t have to rush to their locker and straight to a sport after school.
Sometimes a student might have something else to do before getting to a sport or other activity. For example, a student could have to turn something into a teacher after school before going to their club meeting or sport. Those few minutes that we could save by not going to our lockers would help a great deal in this case.
Even if your bus that takes you to your after school practice doesn’t leave without you, having a coach wait on you isn’t a good thing. Some coaches for other sports might make you run, or do other sorts of punishments for being late, which is why I think allowing backpacks in 7th hour would be a small, easy change that will result in a lot of good for the students’ end.
