Hallway resets picked back up this year at Park to try to get more students to class on time. Many students remember them from last year, and how staff members would walk the hallways looking for students at a random hour of the day. However, resets slowly went away. Now, Park is putting them back into place leading to questioning of their effectiveness.
Principal LaNisha Paddock said the resets were first implemented three years ago to create the norm of being to class on time for all students, and being in the classroom for the whole period.
“We started them three years ago, and hallway resets are really just trying to reestablish expectations of being on time and maximizing classroom instruction time,” Paddock said. “I believe that after the bell there’s nothing really good that happens in the hallway, that’s just not where we should be. There’s absolutely no learning that happens in the hallways.”
Junior Evelyn Barnett, who has been a part of a hallway reset earlier this year, said she believes they aren’t that effective.
“It doesn’t happen enough that it actually really affects anything,” Barnett said. “Even in my first hour today there were people screaming in the hallway.”
Junior Adam Rosvold said he believes the resets are a good idea, but they aren’t being used effectively.
“I think it’s a good way and incentive to get kids to class on time,” Rosvold said. “If they do it more often then it’ll work a lot more, but if they do it once a day, then it’ll just be that one hour when people show up to class on time.”
Barnett said she believes there should be more consistent punishments for not being to class on time or in class at all.
“They should make attendance more important than it is, you should be punished for getting to class late,” Barnett said. “There should be consequences for being late or not showing up.”
Rosvold said the hallway resets should happen more often to create better habits for students.
“They should do the resets each hour every day to keep kids on their toes, and kind of get them in the habit of getting to class on time,” Rosvold said.
According to Paddock, there are other initiatives the school plans to implement to incentivize kids getting to class on time, such as no tardy parties.
“We also are going to start no tardy parties. I don’t know when, but we wanted to get a couple of resets done and then start going to classes and anybody that was on time gets a treat,” Paddock said. “It’s basically an incentive to reinforce being in class and maximizing your instructional time, because that’s really essentially what we’re trying to do.”
