Throughout the school day multiple students here at Chittenango High School from every grade level have a study hall. These study halls are supposed to help students by letting them do things from assignments and studying to getting help from teachers. However, some study halls are more chaotic or less productive than others when you compare them to each other here. Students in study halls can get lots of work done, but there are almost as many kids not doing their work and doing other things than there are doing their work. This provides a question: can students in very chaotic study halls be productive with their time?
At the high school there are sometimes some very disorderly study halls. Even though there can be some small clusters of peace in a study hall they can be drowned out by the storm of chaos in the rest of the study hall. In some of these study halls students can still be productive. Certain students can even finish all of their work even though they are surrounded by distractions. However, some students spend the entire time watching things on youtube, playing games on their ipads, or talking with their friends. There is a small group of students who do a combination of both, doing work for half the period and having fun with their friends or playing a game for the other half.
Many students believe that their peers are productive in their study halls, even if they are in a more chaotic study hall. Some ground rules help the productive students stay productive in their study halls, even if there is a disorderly environment around them. For example one teacher (who is going to be anonymous) said “I tell kids that they can talk, but if they get too loud that they distract the students who are doing their work I tell them to stop.” This simple rule can keep the chaos at bay and control it to allow some students to be productive.
Even though some study halls can be chaotic there are some more peaceful and quiet study halls. In these study halls there is usually less talking with friends and more people are focused on whatever they are doing. There is one thing however that is similar in the more peaceful study halls compared to the more chaotic ones. Around half of the students are actually being productive. The rest are usually doing other things on their ipads. While it might be true that these students have already finished their work, most of them still have work that they have chosen to either do later or not do at all.
Even though the original question was “can students in very chaotic study halls be productive with their time?” new data came up through the research that came to an interesting result. It is true that many students are productive in their study halls, whether they are in a more chaotic or more peaceful study hall, but there are around the same amount of students in all study halls that are being productive. Around half of all the students in the study hall are productive no matter what type of environment they are in. The rest of the students are usually doing other things. So, this all comes to one answer: yes, students in chaotic study halls can be productive and there are around the same amount of students who are productive in all types of study halls in general.
