Each year, McLean high school provides its students with a daily planner where students can record their projects and assignments. But what many students don’t realize is that the planner contains much more.
First of all, there’s the bell schedule. This year, the planner has three different Bell schedules: the everyday bell schedule, the two hour delayed opening schedule, and the early closing schedule. This feature is particularly useful for snow days and ACT days.
Next, there’s the Red and Silver day calendar. It’s just like any other calendar but the only difference is that everyday is colored in either dark gray, “in between” gray, and light gray. The dark gray stands for Red days, the “in between” gray stands for silver days, and the light gray stands for days off (white days are the weekends).
The calendar comes in handy on the days after teacher workdays when there are doubts regarding what class materials to bring to school.
There’s a list of Counselors directly after the calendars. If students haven’t met with their counselors yet, and don’t know who their counselor is, the list addresses the counselors and their respective students in alphabetical order.
To the more formal part of the planner, there’s a section in the planner that explains some rules that students must follow in order to both enjoy and succeed during their high school career.
This includes students expectations and consequences, the honor code, academics/grading, policies, organization and school/community communication.
For all those English assignments that need to be cited, there’s a page on the planner dedicated to that too.
It gives specific examples on how to cite works with one author, two authors, an editor, a general encyclopedia, an article from a multivolume work, newspapers, and magazines.
There are also some good source websites mentioned on the back of the page, and further on, there’s a list of passwords for databases and e-Books.
At the top of every page of the planner there is a study tip, a study planner, and two small little calendars, one highlighting the week of the page, and the other being the calendar of the following month.
There is also a notes space at the edge of the page.
The most useful part of the planner is at the end of the planner section. There are pages dedicated to some classes such as Math and English.
What these pages cover are measurements and conversions, metric conversions, Algebra formulas, squares and square roots, Geometry formulas, Geometry shapes, Trigonometry, Physics, and writing strategies.
At the end of the planner there are some pages printed in color. The first part among these pages is titled “Learning to Learn.”
In “Learning to Learn,” the student can read some tips about doing homework quickly and effectively, studying tricks to succeed on tests, and time management skills.
And finally, there’s an Online Safety section at the very end of the planner.
The section speaks mostly about cyber bullying and not giving out personal information over the internet.
Overall, the McLean high school is not only a planner, but it’s a guide to success and a reliable reminder.
