This second semester brought many changes. One of the newest is the helpful Bearkat Den, moving to two days a week, once on Monday and then again on Friday. Bearkat Den started out as an extra time in the day to work on homework or to get help from other teachers. But now Bearkat Den is something entirely different; it has taken on the form of an extra period in the school. This new schedule gives the opportunities of getting AP help, getting class work finished, or seeing a teacher.

“I like the idea of Bearkat Den, but it’s too soon to say if everything will work how every student expect it to,” said junior Angie Quiroz.

Bearkat Den’s intended purpose is to be what the school would like to call an enrichment period for a variety of different things. This period can used to give AP or EOC testers extra help but then also to become a study hall period. Due to multiple students having so many different kinds of extracurricular activities after school. They don’t leave the school until after 8 o’clock, sometimes later yet, students still have to go home and then do homework while also study for tests.

“Students have been at school since early in the morning and still have all their homework to do. So to give students time to work and study on certain subjects throughout the week they now have Bearkat Den for any subject they need help with,” said Asssociate Principal Debbie Pennington.

There are many concerns for students and the new Bearkat Den, however. There is the possibility of not being able to go to certain classes or that the assigned classes won’t be any of use to a student’s education. Bearkat Den is a great chance to get help in classes but this chance looks like a risk for some students. “I’m ready for all the teachers to get passes so I can have opportunities to go other classes and get extra help for the AP test or other tests in my classes.” said junior Michaela Roberts. “It will really help me in Physics I’m super excited for this opportunity in school to work on certain subjects.”

“I think as much time students give to us, teachers, then we could give the students some of our extra time.” said Pre-Calculus teacher Christy Zorn.