Yackie Castro – 3 days is enough
With Fall Break starting, the debate whether it is long enough or not is a constant debate many students on the Hill are having.
Fall Break starts on October 16 for all those who have raised all their fundraising money, which earns them an extra day of Fall Break. However, the duration of Fall Break ranges from Wednesday the 16th, to Sunday the 20th. For some this may seem like such a short amount of time for a break, but it actually is the perfect length once considering other factors.
Having 3 days is the perfect length for a Fall Break for many reasons. If students are given a shorter break they’re more likely to stay in a consistent routine with their schedules, making the return from Fall Break a lot easier on oneself.
The routine of students throughout a break consists of staying up and cramming in as much fun as possible which isn’t necessarily bad, but it may cause students to feel burnout and dread the return to a normal school schedule.
Teachers expect students to come back to school after break, reenergized and ready to learn. For many students however this is arduous, they simply forget and need some time to trace back and review over the previous lesson prior to Fall Break. The advantage of having a shorter break is that students are more likely to retain information and habits that will help them be poised with their learning and studies.
Maintaining momentum outside the classroom and inside the classroom is crucial for everyone boarded inside the school’s walls. Maintaining the right balance and habits throughout the first quarter will set up students for the following school quarter.
Students are only yet able to find their own techniques and routines to aid individual progress and success. By giving students a long fall break, they’re essentially dropping habits that students have greatly strategized for their own sake in hope to improve one’s learning and educational successes.
Kate Albaugh – We Need More Time
Fall Break, the first real break in the school year, isn’t long enough to even be considered a break. Cathedral students work hard the entire first quarter to uphold their academic reputation, only to be rewarded with a feeble two days off, stuck onto the weekend to make it acceptable.
Cathedral justifies a shorter break as Cathedral gets many other singular days off like Holy days of obligation and other religious holidays. This reasoning makes sense in theory but in actuality other Christian schools who celebrate the same holy days as us get a full week off of school.
Sophomore Ruth Pappas said, “I think that we should get the week off, for most teachers they use it as throw away days anyway so they might as well just give us the whole week.” The extra two days don’t hold content in many classes because many students just skip them all together.
The classes that do hold class as normal, normally have a review day the next week for kids that weren’t there. The last two days only have a significant effect by causing stress for kids that miss them.
Cathedral does offer a chance for students to make their breaks longer through the Ignite the Irish fundraiser. Each student is tasked with raising one hundred and fifty dollars to dress out of uniform and then is encouraged to raise another fifty to earn the last day of school before fall break off. Most students achieved their goals and earned a day off, but some did not.
This task is entirely unfair to students that aren’t able to earn the money. While most students can either pay the whole thing themselves or send a few texts to relatives, some can’t. The students that can’t pay the goal, the very people the fundraiser is trying to help, are punished with an extra day of school.
Fall Break should be a time to relax after a long quarter of hard work and stress, instead, Cathedral makes its students work even harder for a break, and even then it barely provides any break at all.
