The phrases “walk with a purpose” and “we need you in class” are commonly heard around the halls at Warren Central. These sayings are used to encourage students to get to class to avoid the CORE room, Warren’s version of a tardy room.
After about two years of the CORE room being present in the school, students still don't seem to get the memo that getting to class on time is mandatory. The CORE room is designed to hold students for an entire period, resulting in the students missing the class they would be in had they been on time.
“The CORE room has been around since before I got here,” Principal Masimba Taylor said. “My understanding initially was that there was a lot of concern from teachers about when students are late to class they have to stop what they are doing and open the door, interrupt, and get students caught up. It was initially created as a solution to that concern.”
We believe that while the CORE room is a great idea and should be relevant in our school, it is not necessarily acting as a motivator to get students to class.
As of right now, when students go to the CORE room they are not required to do their school work, even though it is encouraged. Instead, students sit on their phones and go to sleep. For some students, this may be seen as an escape route from going to class.
While we do understand where administrators are coming from by running the CORE room, we believe that more can be done. Administrators should re-work the CORE room to become a place that students actually want to avoid. We believe that if administrators were to make students watch videos about attendance or other school issues that it might be an incentive to get to class rather than watch the videos being shown.
Currently, repercussions for going to the CORE room include calls home and suspensions, but those punishments do not always emphasize the lesson of getting to class on time.
Students may get a call home or be suspended, but if parents are not willing to take responsibility or hold their student responsible for missing class, a suspension or a call home may be otherwise useless, until administrators can get it into students' heads that they need to be in class on time.
Some students do take the CORE room seriously, and we do understand that going to the CORE room is not an experience that many students at our school will experience. However, it does not excuse the fact that there are students in the CORE room every week, every day, every period. The number of students adds up over time. We believe that if administrators keep pushing the same agenda they have for the past two years, students will continue to stop listening and responding. Because of this, a new system or different “punishment” is needed.
The fact of the matter is that many students do not take the CORE room seriously. While administrators and hall monitors continuously tell students to get to class, going to the CORE room takes students out of class. In the CORE room students are not required to complete school work, so it is then allowing students to not only not go to class, but also to not do school work.