Clubs meeting during SRT time on 9/7 are:
- Environmental club M208
- Art Club B106
- United Voices M210
- 80’s Non-Electric Gaming Club Media Center
8/24 IMPORTANT SRT UPDATE: Student Resource Time has been moved to after 6th hour. SRT will no longer take place after third hour to better accommodate Career Center students. SRT will now take place from 1:50-2:45pm on Wednesdays. Lunch schedules have also changed and will be the same as they are on normal days, there will no longer be SRT classroom-based lunches. See new SRT schedule below:
| Period | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| 1 | 8:30-9:20 | 8:30-9:20 | 8:30-9:10 | 8:30-9:20 | 8:30-9:20 |
| 2 | 9:25-10:15 | 9:25-10:15 | 9:15-9:55 | 9:25-10:15 | 9:25-10:15 |
| 3 | 10:20-11:10 | 10:20-11:10 | 10:00-10:40 | 10:20-11:10 | 10:20-11:10 |
| 4 | 11:15-12:05 | 11:15-12:05 | 10:45-11:30 | 11:15-12:05 | 11:15-12:05 |
| 5 Lunch | 12:10-1:40 | 12:10-1:40 | 11:30-1:00 | 12:10-1:40 | 12:10-1:40 |
| 6 | 1:45-2:35 | 1:45-2:35 | 1:05-1:45 | 1:45-2:35 | 1:45-2:35 |
| SRT | 1:50-2:45 | ||||
| 7 | 2:40-3:30 | 2:40-3:30 | 2:50-3:30 | 2:40-3:30 | 2:40-3:30 |
Welcome back to school Trojans! A new school year is upon New Castle High School. With a new school year comes many new faces, changes, and opportunities. One of the biggest of these changes is the newly implemented Student Resource Time.
Many Trojans have been asking themselves, what exactly is Student Resource Time? Well, NCHS Principal Kirk Amman describes it as “Connect time.”
Junior Laura Fischer says, “ I don’t really have an opinion on it yet, I’m going into it with an open mind. I wouldn’t say that I’m excited to try [Student Resource Time]. I may consider joining a club, but I’ll see.”
SRT will be a time for students to become more connected with their school. One of the uses of SRT will be a time for clubs to meet so students that do not have time to meet after school will be included. Students will also be able to meet with teachers and have study time.
New Castle High School Principal Kirk Amman says “SRT will definitely be a good thing for our school. It will help us to just feel an overall sense of connectedness and togetherness.”
SRT will also be a time for students to catch up on work or to talk to their teachers for extra help on homework. For teachers, SRT will be a time to check grades weekly and help their students give their best efforts.
SRT will be every Wednesday starting on August 17. On SRT days, classes will be shortened to 40 minutes instead of the regular 50 minutes. After the third period, students will go to their SRT classrooms. SRT will be from 10:45-11:40. SRT classes will be in groups of 25 randomly selected students. Students will eat lunch during their fourth-hour class. The time students eat lunch on these days will be determined by what teacher they have.
Amman hopes the SRT classrooms will be a time for the upperclassmen to better connect with the underclassmen since SRT classrooms will be a mix of all four grades.
This week’s time will focus on discussing expectations, setting up Google Classroom pages, and icebreakers. The second half of SRT time will be group discussion on a video that everyone will view during this week’s time.
Continuing forward after the first two weeks of SRT, the first half of SRT will be used for study time and connecting time with teachers, and the second half will be for meeting with clubs. The hope is that SRT time will eventually replace home rooms.
“We really want people to focus during that time,” Amman says, “It is not going to be a time to roam around and just be hanging out, we want cell phones put away. We just really want people to focus during that time and use it to their advantage.”
How did New Castle get the idea for student resource time? A lot of students who are involved in extracurricular activities, such as sports, do not have time to meet after school for clubs. SRT time will partially or completely eliminate the need for clubs to meet after school. The school hopes this will help with the overall school feeling of togetherness as well.
Freshman Anyah Amman says, “I would love to be able to participate in clubs during school hours. I am looking forward to this change and I do consider joining a couple clubs during this time.”
SRT time also gives students and teachers more time to meet one on one. Students that have questions on material or need extra help can get personal help from their teachers. Students that need more time for homework can utilize this time as a study hall.
The administration points to schools like Rushville and Hagerstown who have experimented with block scheduling and something similar to SRT and have had success with it. “Ideally we had wanted to make SRT time every day, but that just wouldn’t have worked out with people’s credits,” stated Amman.
According to Amman, this has been a long time coming project. The administration has been working on making Student Resource Time a reality for the last year and a half. The administration has been meticulous in their planning and attention to detail.
“I’m excited about it. We’ve been working for a year and a half to make this a reality. SRT does break up the manotomy,” Amman stated, “we’re just going to start small and see how it goes.”
However, the new SRT is not the only thing Amman is excited about this year. On September 14, New Castle will be having a schoolwide cookout, similar to the one that took place during homecoming last year. This cookout will take place on one of the SRT days. Activities at this cookout will include food vendors, games, and even possibly a Powderpuff Football game.
Another exciting event for students to look forward to during SRT will be the return of guest speakers. Due to COVID levels dropping, New Castle will be hosting their first guest speaker since before the pandemic. The administration is very excited to host more speakers and events this school year.
With all of these new changes and events in place, New Castle administrators are looking forward to a year of normalcy after the past two and a half years of being plagued by COVID. We are grateful for all of the hard work that our administrators put in to make our school a better place.
“SRT is one of the things I’m really excited for this school year. And having a sense of normalcy after COVID,” Amman says, “Hopefully most or all of the COVID restrictions this year are lifted so we can do all the activities that we want to do. I’m definitely looking forward to a fun year.”
