SIS and SHS

SIS and SHS
Shorewood Intermediate School and Shorewood High School are both great schools. When I first came to middle school, I struggled because I was unorganized and was not ready for the increase in difficulty and responsibility from elementary school to middle school. Teachers enforced deadlines much more, a lesson I learned the hard way, and the amount of homework was unbelievable. They were also strict about allowing people to leave the classroom, requiring a pass each time. Although middle school was a challenge, it prepared me for high school, which in ways was very similar. On the other hand, there are many differences between middle and high school.
One of the biggest differences between the two is the amount of freedom and choices the student has. In middle school, students are constantly kept track of by the teachers and staff. Every time a student wants to leave the classroom for something that isn’t class related, they have to fill out a pass stating where they are going, what time they left, and what time they will be back. Some places that students need to fill out a pass to go to include the restroom, the drinking fountain, or their lockers to retrieve forgotten items. Students are only given a certain number of passes to use, and if they need to leave, but do not have any passes, the teacher will either not allow them to leave, or will allow them to leave at the expense of points.
During lunch, students have some freedom of choice on what they want to do, but they still are very closely kept track of. Occasionally, teachers order food and students can eat in their classrooms, and other times teachers take a group of students to a nearby restaurant. This only happens two or three times in the whole school year, so for the most part students are limited to eating in the cafeteria. Since finishing a meal normally does not take up the entire lunch period, students have four options on what they can do after they are done. These choices are going outside, to the gym, to the library, or staying in the lunchroom. To leave the cafeteria students must have a pass and although they do not need to use their personal ones, there are still a limited number of them. Members of the staff will walk around, giving passes to students that have cleaned up their tables and are raising their hands. Those who are not able to obtain a pass to their desired location, or who are unlucky enough to not even receive a pass, are forced to remain in the lunchroom. Which can be bad if your whole group of friends has gone somewhere and you are left behind. SIS is limited in the area of freedom and choices, mostly because students are not ready for the amount of freedom given in SHS.
In the high school, if a student needs to leave the classroom to go to the restroom, the drinking fountain, or to their locker, the teacher will allow them to, without requiring them to fill out a pass. Passes still have their place though, students must get a pass from the office if they are late or plan on leaving at some point during the day. If a student needs to go to the library or the computer lab during a class period, they must have a signed pass from their teacher.
Lunch time in SHS is open campus, which means that students are allowed to go anywhere they wish. They can choose to buy food on campus in the cafeteria, but there is also the option of leaving the campus and buying food elsewhere.
When students make the transition from elementary school to SIS, they will quickly learn that they must be a bit more responsible. Writing down the assignments and completing them on time is essential for students to succeed. Especially when it comes to the projects in middle school, since most of them are major parts of their grades. When comparing responsibility between middle school and high school, middle school is like driving a car, while high school is more like flying an airplane. In middle school everything is laid out for you, much like a road leading directly from one place to another. Students are required to take notes in class and to take notes from textbooks for homework, along with several other assignments that enforce the ideas and information taught in class. The subjects being studied in class are also discussed and gone over almost every day. Because of this, students usually do not have the responsibility of having to study to learn the material on their own. They can learn everything, simply by playing attention to class discussions. This is similar to driving a car down a straight road because all you have to do is keep your hands on the wheel. If students are absent for a few days of school, it is much like just stopping the car and taking a break. You loose time but there are no serious consequences. Teachers in SIS allow students to make up the work after they return and if they happen to miss a test, teachers allow the students to choose a reasonable time to make it up. Missing a few days of middle school does little or nothing to a student’s grade.
When students go from middle school to high school, they will notice that in order to succeed, they must become even more responsible. Responsibility in high school is like flying an airplane, because unlike a straight road in middle school, there is the whole open sky. There are many ways of getting to one place. Some ways are good and make for a smooth flight, while others can lead students into a storm filled with turbulence. It is a student’s choice on how to learn. Although teachers suggest that students write down the notes they provide in class, many, if not all of them, will not argue with someone who refuses to. When flying an airplane across the US you can pass over several states in a matter of hours, while driving across them takes several days. Instead of going over the same ideas and information day after day like in middle school, new ones are always being introduced. Because of this, it can be difficult for students to completely understand something by paying attention in class alone, so there is the responsibility to learn the material by studying at home. If students plan on being absent, getting and completing the homework before they go and taking the test that they will miss is a requirement. If students do not, they can end up getting failing grades for important assignments, which can be a big issue if they are gone for more than a few days. As long as students take responsibility for learning the material and doing their work, most have a smooth flight. While students who are irresponsible will often fly into a storm, where it is easy to get lost or even crash.
The facilities in SIS are one of the main things that make it a good school. There is a large gym, full of equipment for a wide range of sports and games. There is equipment for sports like football, basketball, soccer, tennis, hockey, and volleyball. And in addition, there is also equipment for sports that are not as common, such as la crosse and badminton. The SIS library has a large selection of books for reading and for research. It also contains one of the three computer labs in the middle school. Computers are an essential tool for learning and having many of them in a school is very useful. Although SIS handles the amount of students attending it well, it can feel crowded. This is especially true before class starts in the morning and after it ends in the afternoon. The crowded feeling becomes evident at these times because some of the corridors where the lockers are placed are narrow, making it hard to walk through with a lot of people standing around in them. The middle school also feels crowded at lunch, because after all, a whole grade is packed into one room and many people are trying to get food from the same place at once.
SHS is a bigger school than SIS, so it makes sense that it has more and larger facilities. The high school has three gyms that have all the equipment the middle school has and more. Also, there are two large swimming pools that are used for physical education and life guarding classes. When it comes to computers, SHS has more than SIS. SHS has three, large, computer labs and a library with several computers as well. In addition, the high school has a portable, wireless, laptop lab. SHS also has its own auditorium, where assemblies, concerts, and plays are held. The hallways in the high school can become crowded during the period between classes, but in general the whole school is much less crowded than the middle school due to the fact that it is made up of four buildings, whereas the middle school is just one.
In my opinion, SHS is the superior school. You are given much more freedom, especially during lunchtime. Not being forced to eat in the same, noisy, lunchroom every day makes lunch feel like the break it is supposed to be, instead of the hassle it was in middle school. Although the classes in SHS move significantly faster than the classes in SIS, and more responsibility is required of you, going to school at SHS is definitely a better experience for me.