Due to high enrollment the choir program was forced to add a “zero hour” class
For junior Emmett Bongaarts, the decision to wake up much earlier than normal this year was a no-brainer.
Bongaarts is one of many choir students at Park who decided to take the new “zero hour” choir class which occurs before school.
The class option was added this year to relieve large class sizes created by a sharp increase in enrollment and interest in the choir program.
Choir teacher John Myszkowski teaches at the High School and the Middle School and is only available to teach the first two hours of the day at the high school, before switching to the Middle School. Therefore, the only way to alleviate high class numbers was to add a class before school.
Despite having to wake up earlier, Bongaarts said he did not put much thought into what his decision would be regarding keeping choir in his schedule.
“I love choir so much, it was a must to keep it. I built my entire schedule around it,” Bongaarts said.
While Bongaarts indicated that for him waking up earlier is not that much of a struggle, given that he has had to wake up earlier for early-morning choir musical practices before, junior Thomas Djerf indicates otherwise.
“Waking up earlier is definitely difficult, but it was worth it to free up my schedule during the day,” Djerf said.
According to Bongaarts, so far, the new zero-hour class has been getting mostly positive reviews from other students in the class. Bongaarts also said they enjoy certain perks to the class that they would have lost with enormous class sizes.
“I really like zero hour, as it’s a smaller class so we’re much more productive as a group,” Bongaarts said. “And besides, zero hour gave me much more flexibility with my schedule in the morning, so that made it well worth it.”
