Amber Sadiq, Reporter
@asadiqcourant
Connection Time, an important group activity separate from school curriculum, has recently made its comeback. In order to adhere with COVID-19 guidelines, some changes took place. Assistant Principal and Connection Time Supervisor, Ari Rothman says, “We couldn’t fit people into spaces.”
Mr. Rothman, the assistant principal of NCHS and grade 11 advisor said this about the changes in routine. “My group would meet in the World Language office. Myself and thirteen or fourteen other students couldn’t be in a single space together.” he says, “Because of the coming circumstances, we couldn’t do it for a long time. Finally when things sort of got set, when classes were set, we then basically decided to try it again. Except this time we would have connection time connected with people’s classes.”
This particular time period was designated for students to make Connections with each other, hence the name. The idea is that you want to create an opportunity for students to get to know an adult other than a teacher, just another connection. Heterogeneous groups that get together periodically, talk about different things and be a sort of sounding board.”
On his own experiences leading a connection group, he went on to say, “As an administrator, I would ask the students various things like what they were planning on doing and what their experience was overall. It was another way to build community. That’s the way it was always set up and ran,” Mr. Rothman continued to explain, “a lot of it was to develop a lot of emotional intelligence tools and to build on social-emotional learning. But non-academic stuff.”
Connection time has always served to be beneficial for students, but it’s effectiveness has changed with the pandemic.“ It’s as effective as the effort people put into it. says Mr. Rothman, “Some teachers, I wish I had put more effort into it, and some took it more seriously.”
This year, administrators have decided to incorporate Connection time with classes, “I was pleasantly surprised to hear that when we had to connect to a class, a lot of people liked the idea. It acts like another way to connect with other people in your class, something we didn’t have before,” said Mr. Rothman.
But the remaining concern is whether or not students are more engaged with these new changes. “I sent out a survey, I got mostly underclassmen responses,” said Mr. Rothman “Most of their responses were positive but some suggested that their teacher didn’t take it too seriously, so I think, everybody is a little up in the air this year.”
Mr. Rothman hopes to return to the old connection groups by fall, “The plan is to some day, soon again, hopefully get back to our old groups. You want to build a relationship with that group over the course. But then again, it all depends on the group and depends on how much effort people put into it anyway.”
