Last year, every student at Wayland High School knew that they could go to the Writing Center whenever they needed extra help on a paper. This year, the Writing Center has been replaced with writing labs, extra class periods similar to science lab blocks, for freshmen and sophomores in College Prep level English classes.

“The College English I and College English II Writing Labs target students least likely to seek extra help on their own,” said Brian Keaney, English Department Head.  “It helps to reinforce writing skills stressed in classes and things that need to be tweaked or revised.”

Freshmen have a lab twice every 8-day rotation, and sophomores have them once per rotation.  However, each lab only consists of half the students in the class, and each half of the class has lab at a different time.

Therefore, every English teacher who teaches a lab has four more teaching periods for every freshman class and two more teaching periods for every sophomore class.

“There were some budget cuts made last year. One other option was for the teachers to do five classes instead,” explained Keaney. “I suggested the idea of the writing labs because I wanted to preserve being able to talk one on one with the students.”

Vice Principal Bayard Kilmasmith had another reason for writing labs.

“When you decide that you have this level and that level, there’s already going to be some kind of gap between the kids,” he said. “The reason that I was behind the proposal, is that I liked the idea of saying, ‘Well let’s take a look at the college level classes, and let’s make sure that we can reduce the gap, rather than make the gap widen.’”

Students taking English classes with lab blocks have had mixed reactions.

“They’re slightly needed, but I don’t like it,” said sophomore Nikhil Mysore.

While most students don’t like having an extra English period, a few agree that they do help.  “You get to practice writing on a nice computer, and work on new assignments,” said Joey Defina.

In addition, many students and teachers prefer being able to work with smaller groups.Compared to typical English classes, teachers are able to spend more time going around to students individually.

“It’s a little nice because instead of a normal class, you can talk one-on-one with the teacher,” said sophomore James Longnecker.

However, most of the English teachers agree that this new system reduces chances for students to talk to their teachers outside of class. Juniors, seniors and honors students can no longer go into the Writing Center to meet with a teacher, and English teachers have to teach the labs as well as normal classes, so they have even fewer free periods to conference with students.

“The only problem I see with this new part of our program is that English teachers now have less time to confer with their other students,” said English teacher Zachary Vonnegut.”I think it would be a mistake for the administration to prioritize anything over individualized writing instruction because this is something that students are not likely to receive at the next level.”

The Writing Labs have only been implemented for a couple months so far, so nothing is conclusive yet.  Only time can tell whether this trade-off is successful or not.