New Freshman Foundations policies were implemented, affecting both freshmen and Foundations leaders.
This year, a change in Freshmen Foundations sponsors, Michael Kaufman and Victoria Foss, has led to shifts across the program and everyone that is a part of it: the freshmen attending it each week, their leaders, and the supervisor of each classroom. All of this has led to uneasiness and uncertainty about the program’s future. Shloka Rao, senior and Foundations leader, describes what the new changes exactly are.
“There has definitely been a lot of shifting [since last year]. This is definitely a growth year for the [Foundations] program,” Rao said. “One change that we made was, instead of three days a week, we would do four days a week for both semesters, whereas last year the schedule used to be three days a week for first semester and then two to three days during second semester.”
Despite all of the changes made to the program, the core of the program remains the same: to assimilate the incoming freshmen to their new environment. Every LZHS student has been in Foundations at some point, so every student knows the basic skills of what is learned in Foundations.
“So far, we have done a lot of introductions. Getting to build relationships with the freshmen is really our main priority. We’ve also dealt with topics such as time management,” Rao said. “We’re still in the baby, earlier phases of the [Foundations] program, but other topics that we will go into are SEL competencies [and] how to manage your stress.”
Foundations also serves as a time to get tasks done and not take time up from a regular class period. For example, a student can get their College Board account set up or finish their social emotional learning during foundations instead of a regular class period.
“Some won’t always enjoy it, because at the end of the day, all they see is that there’s 20 minutes taken out of [their] lunch. Whereas sometimes, it takes a growth and an open mindset to think that this program is in place for a reason,” Rao said.
Freshmen still get a normal lunch experience every Friday. Since there are four different lunch periods, each one of them is allotted a regular, 40-minute period: which adds up to 200 minutes of free time each week for each freshmen. The Foundations periods have their own subsection on the bell schedule. On Fridays, students have an option of whether to go to the cafeteria, Studio C, the library, the learning stairs, or to spend it with a teacher. Layna Flack, freshman, describes her usual Friday lunch period.
“Lunch feels really, really, long [on Fridays], it’s kind of crazy. […] I’m still not used to how long the lunch periods are here. [The lunches at] Middle School [are] pretty short, but I like [Friday lunches] way better than Monday through Thursday, because I can actually take the time to eat with my friends,” Flack said.
Since incoming freshmen did not attend LZHS last year, they do not have anything to compare the current foundations with. Only upperclassmen get a scope of how the Foundations program has evolved over the years, but the new Freshmen are coming into this with a fresh perspective.
“Well, I personally think that four days is a lot to be in that class,” Flack said. “I mean, I wasn’t here last year, so I don’t really know how it went last year, but I feel like three would have been a little better.”
