E-Op stands for Educational Opportunity Program and Wheeling Park High School enacted this program in the last few days of the first nine weeks. Students were given the opportunity to make up work such as missing assignments, assessments, or projects. Similarly, if students needed help in certain classes they were able to receive that support from teachers during the E-Op period. However, for the students who had no missing work and were confident in all of their classes, the school established a type of reward system for them where these students could go to fun E-Ops led by teachers. Through this, the school is displaying to students that keeping up with your grades and behaving in the classroom results in rewards. Some of these E-Ops included: trivia, study hall, wellness walks, bingo, and many more.
There were some mixed opinions on these E-Op periods, because some people felt that they weren’t very effective while others thought they were very beneficial to students. There were also people whose opinions changed after the week of E-Op periods. This E-Op session was only a trial run, and most likely, issues that may have arisen will be fixed for future E-Op days.
“I think having the E-Op days allow for students with large amounts of absenteeism, to get back on track prior to the end of the nine weeks” said Mrs. Redilla, Science Department Chair at Wheeling Park High School.
E-Op days were beneficial to people who had missed a lot of school due to extracurricular activities, being sick, etc. E-Op days allowed for teachers to provide students the support they needed, in terms of helping them understand the content in which was being taught in class and offering them time to do or make-up their work. This was also helpful for teachers because it gave them a designated time that they could work with their students and help them bring up their grades. This method worked to prevent students from trying to lift their grades a week before grades close, which helps teachers also because then they don’t have to grade so many assignments all at once. Additionally, these days gave people who were caught up on their work a time to breathe and enjoy themselves, by giving them an opportunity to try new activities and spend time with their friends.
“It gives those people an opportunity to not only connect maybe with other students, with a new club that they’ve never thought of joining, but it also gives those who are missing a bunch of work time to get caught up” said Mrs. Schrebe, English teacher at Wheeling Park High School.
Common issues that teachers came across included having the E-Op days back to back for the first four days of the week. Some felt that it was overwhelming to have to schedule students and make sure all students who were scheduled were in attendance. Students also were struggling to have to study for multiple tests and make up many assignments all in one week. There was also the issue that the E-Ops that were available were getting filled up quickly and students ended up not having an E-Op to go to, which resulted in students attending random E-Ops that were available.
“I think there could have been more options and they could have added a couple more people to each one so that there wasn’t as much closed off options,” said Michala Hockenberry, freshman at WPHS, who attended the trivia and bingo E-Ops.
Many teachers hope that the E-Op program continues to be implemented by the school, because they believe that they benefited students is various ways and they helped to establish a well-paced classroom. Similarly, students enjoyed having a period of the day where they could relax, socialize with others, and try new activities.
