Intended for success, the block schedule has students attending every class for 40 minutes on Wednesdays. Students are becoming more and more stressed with work from their classes and Wednesdays were made to ease the workload.

“I actually like having short periods instead, because it feels exhausting being in the same class in the same spot for a long time when you’re in a longer class for more than like 30 minutes or something,” junior Genesis Miranda said, “so I actually do like on Wednesday scheduled better.”

Other students had many positive things to say about the Wednesday schedule so far. They enjoy having the short periods since they’re able to see all of their teachers and check in with them. Some students also talked about how teachers use that time as catch-up work days or days for students to be able to get help on subjects that they’re working on. Ethan Rudy, a sophomore at Sequoia said, “I think that the Wednesday schedule, it’s good because you get to go to all your classes, but you don’t get a lot of time in, in all the classes you only get 40 minutes, so it’s not enough time to complete long assignments.”

Sophomore Natalie Ciraulo similarly said. “I like having every class on one day because then it feels like I get to check in with each teacher during the week versus being like, only every other day.”

Some students talked about the downsides of Wednesdays, one fact being that students get overloaded with work since the periods are so short they aren’t able to complete all of their work.

“I think it’s harder to get work done. But it gives teachers time to let us catch up on the work in their class, which is helpful, because sometimes projects or assignments will continue on to Wednesday. And so it gives us time to continue work, which I think is helpful,” Ciraulo elaborated.

Some students proposed changes that could be made to the schedule in order for them to maximize their learning time.

“I think that if the periods were changed into days like flex period it would help me get more work done,” sophomore Renée Van Vliet said.

Last year’s distance learning schedule included an asynchronized day where students were given a set amount of work by their teachers and they could complete it all on their own time.

“I think that asynchronous days would be a good option as well, [like last year’s schedule] where they gave you the work and you worked at your own pace,” Rudy said.

Wednesdays could become essential work days for students especially when it comes to them being able to completely understand a topic being taught or them being able to finish work for a certain class due to a heavy workload.

Sequoia staff is trying to introduce more time for students to catch up on work and get extra help from teachers as well by creating flex periods into students’ schedules on Thursdays and Fridays which allow students to go into any class and get help from their teachers or work on assignments for that class.