Before the first week of the school year, West Albany High School’s dance team, the Hi-Steppers, were notified of a major change that would affect their schedule; they would be starting and ending their dance practice earlier.
In previous years, the Hi-Steppers would start their practice at roughly 6:30 a.m. and end at 8:30 a.m., but due to the shift in schedule, their new starting time is 6:00 a.m., and they will end at 7:15 a.m. The Hi-Steppers start their practice time earlier in the morning, before most students arrive at school or even wake up, during a zero period.
As described by senior and dance team member Nyah Kinney, “A zero period is a class before school starts. The zero period does count as an elective for us, so we do get an extra open later in the day.” A zero period isn’t new, as the dance team was accustomed to a longer duration in previous years.
“The last two years it [was every] gold day,” said senior and dance team member Makenna Hay, “My freshman year, it was [every] blue day. We would start earlier than school [still], so we would practice zero period and first period,” Hay said. “Now that it’s only a zero period, we start even earlier than we used to. It officially [counts as] a zero period.”
The change of the Hi-Steppers’ schedule was short notice, and would cause them to wake up earlier than they planned. The upperclassmen of the team were upset and went to get answers from Mr. Engle, “Our school cut sixty class offerings during certain periods, and Wind Ensemble is always during first period,”
Senior wind ensemble and dance team member Baylee Fox said. “We couldn’t put the dance class there, and we couldn’t put it on gold days, because there was an underclassman required class during [that] time. It [is] not offered during any other time.” After getting their answers, the upperclassmen appreciated the honesty of Mr. Engle.
Since the Hi-Steppers start their practice at 6:00 a.m., they don’t get much time to sleep, which could lead to potential burnout. “This first month of school, I’d gotten sick, and I’ve stayed sick for way longer than I should be,” Fox said. “I’m pretty sure it’s because I have no time to rest because of all the things that I’m doing, and having to wake up super early and getting home late at night, I’m getting only about six hours of sleep,” said Fox, noting that her time on the team is starting to burn her out, even though the school year started last month.
Kinney is also feeling the effects of her lack of sleep; she believes her performance is being affected by the schedule change. “I would say it affects my performance, since our practice times are a lot shorter now, it feels like we get less done each practice, which can feel a little bit discouraging sometimes, especially since a lot of the upperclassmen are used to the longer practices.” Kinney thinks she and her upperclassmen teammates are struggling to adapt to the new schedule.
Despite waking up early and being exhausted, the Hi-Steppers are finding the silver lining to their situation. “We don’t have to do it during school anymore. We don’t have people walking through the gym or interrupting us or getting kicked out of the gym consistently, because whenever we had practice that would go on during our first period, the PE class would always kick us out to the auxiliary gym or upstairs,” says Hay, who sees the schedule change as a positive, rather than a negative.
“I would 100% change it back if I could. I understand that it wasn’t anybody’s fault, it just happened to be that way,” said Kinney. Fox feels the same way, wanting to revert to the schedule that she grew to know. “We’re just super rushed now and don’t have as much time to warm up and get the fundamentals that we used to be able to work on.”
