Looking outside the window, winter seems to be right around the corner. For students at Cathedral, this means they are one step closer to finals. The first quarter ended on Friday, and both students and teachers have tried to put their best foot forward.

Principal Mr. Dave Worland reflected the concluding quarter.

He said, “It’s been awfully smooth; I think that the students and our faculty and our staff approached the year with a good, solid sense of awareness of how (the year) should start. There has been very few issues that have slowed us down. I’m really pleased, and I think that it has been a great start, and I’m looking forward continuing our wonderful school year.”

Changes made

Worland is satisfied with the small changes made before the beginning of the year, including “the little adjustment to our daily schedule where we went from having some long class periods and some short periods to where they’re all in the middle. We also felt lunch periods were a little short, so we added five minutes to those.”

A major change Worland wants to implement for the second quarter focuses on students’ behavior. He said, “As much as I’ve been really impressed with the leadership of the Senior Class and have been really encouraged with a lot of things going on there, I’m overall concerned and I want to see a change in all of our students’ attitude and behavior when it comes to social media, digital communications, and how we relay our opinions and words that seem to be hurtful to those who are receiving it.

“So that has to stop. I don’t think it’s so bad that it’s an epidemic but if it happens a couple times, it happens a couple times too many.

“It has been happening more than it has in the past so I’m really going to put my foot down, monitor and correct any kinds of those behaviors and attitudes. Students were just saying some evil, hurtful things digitally.”

Worland plans to take a stance against these negative actions and work to combat this issue.

He said, “One thing is because our incoming Freshman Class doesn’t know how we operate yet, I want to tackle these communications with these new students so I’m going to have the opportunity probably during freshman resource periods where I go in and talk to small groups and from there I might add one or two individual sessions, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to get all 285 freshmen in an assembly, I’m not there yet.

“I do believe in small groups of maybe 30 kids at a time. I will also work with our peer mentors because they are role models for our freshmen and they can help instill things not to do, things not to say.”

New courses

The first quarter also marked the beginning for new courses. Worland expressed the positive feedback he has received from faculty and students.

“I’ve heard a lot of really positive feedback especially with a lot of the new courses in the STEM area, engineering and technology and computer science. Those have been really well received. We are near capacity in those classes this year. Next year I think we’re going to expand more.”

“Our broadcasting class (is also near capacity). We could only handle one section this first semester, so it’s full. That’s going well, and I’m encouraged,” Worland said.

Traffic

It’s no surprise that the construction on 56th Street has caused upset, both in people’s emotions and in the amount of student tardies.

Worland hopes the end of the construction will fix this problem. He said, “Well, I’ve had encouraging news that the whole 56th Street thing will be finished by the end of (this) week. The goal is that we will have four lanes that first week in the second quarter.”

Worland did say that he would like students to remember to leave for school early enough to arrive on time.

Brunette Park potential

Finally, Worland spoke about Brunette Park, the school’s new athletic facility.

“The baseball field is ready. It has been expanded because (while) it was a good place to play Little League, the outfield needed to be expanded and the baselines needed to be broadened. If we wanted to play a game there tomorrow, we could. That goal has been accomplished.”

He said, “There is all kinds of plans being made for Brunette Park as we speak. One positive is that our women’s cross-country team has been able to practice there. I know that we’ve had some of other sports out there to do training.”

Worland also mentioned the potential of Brunette Park of being a social space for events for “students, faculty, parents and alumni.”

Worland looks forward to the coming developments both regarding Brunette Park and the school as a whole as second quarter is underway.