Fourth period: a block where students spend time completing WINGS assignments, chatting and visiting teachers for help. Until recently, the period was split up into three sections: Advisory, in which students learn essential Portrait of a Graduate skills, and two Warhawk Times, in which students can visit teachers or friends in other classes. However, the 2025-2026 school year has brought many changes to this system; instead of having two Warhawk Time blocks where students can move freely, one has been replaced by Support Block. The students can also only visit their own teachers and can’t be in the hallway after the bell rings.
“The general observation of staff and leadership at the school is that often, the students who need the support the most do not self-select into attending and receiving support, so they hopefully benefit from more structure and accountability from working on classes they are struggling with or behind in,” counselor T.J. Anderson said. “It’s not that much different than Warhawk Time has been for students who are actually studying.”
It is easy at first glance to see the benefits of this new system, but at a closer look, holes become apparent quickly. Many students do not find this system useful, as they believe the additional limitations make it harder for them to get where they need to be. In the past, students visited multiple teachers during Warhawk Time in order to get the maximum amount of help instead of being limited by the constraints of the system. Now, with limitations in place, it is a lot harder for students to work together on projects or homework during fourth period if they aren’t assigned to the same classroom.
“I liked having freedom to go to multiple classes,” Max Harr-Robins (’27) said. “Now, it’s really hard to visit all the teachers that I want to if I don’t have a free period or show up early to school.”
While many students feel that the support block has been detrimental, there are some who see the positive effects of the system. Before students’ movement was more limited, they would often forgo academic help to hang out with friends during Warhawk Time.
“I worry that when we provide maximum freedom, as we did in the previous iteration of fourth period, the kids who might not be as mature about studying, completing assignments… might slip through the cracks,” English teacher Jamie Allen said. “This Support Block system helps seal the cracks.”
There are flaws in this system, besides the dissent it has caused amongst the students. Because it was implemented so quickly at the beginning of this year, not all policies are firmly in place with the proper enforcement techniques. For example, one of the parts of the new system is that teachers can request or obligate students to visit their classroom and work during Support Block. Although teachers continually attempt to get students to visit them for help with this technique, and there is a method of tracking who shows up and who doesn’t, students still tend to ignore the new rule.
“Whatever it is that is meant to deter students from ignoring their assigned support block, it is not working because many students still do not come,” Allen said. “I personally have found that around 70% of my assigned students don’t come.”
All in all, the Support Block system has not proved to be a useful technique to get students to do their work or to visit teachers for help thus far. It would be more effective if students who didn’t need help were limited less, and there was a better way to enforce rules for those who needed guidance. However, until then, students will not see Support Block as a helpful system.
