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Every morning at NS, school begins about an hour before health experts recommend adolescents should be awake and functioning. As if waking up early to get to school at 8:13 isn’t enough, dozens of students come to school every morning almost an hour earlier, just to do some more learning.
“Asking students to be here at 7:20 four out of five days every week is a lot,” journalism Advisor Ben Cox said.
NS has three early morning classes, journalism, broadcasting, and jazz band, each with different objectives and purposes.
Journalism is a class where students perform interviews, write stories, and record videos, all in the pursuit of communicating news to the students of NS and surrounding community.
“We produce a paper every single month, which is huge for a high school,” senior Mayzie Talbot said.
Journalism is pushing to become more of an online-based news source this year, along with writing their paper.
“We want our paper to be more online because technology is such a big deal these days,” Talbot said. “It’s been a bit of a challenge, but we’re getting there.”
Broadcasting is a class in which students also record and interview, but instead of producing a newspaper, produce announcement video broadcasts, and other video presentations for individuals and organizations throughout the school.
“I think a lot of people like it because it’s not a typical classroom experience,” broadcasting advisor Barrett Hilton said.
Broadcasting, along with their typical responsibilities, take requests from anybody that needs a video, and always make sure to put forth their finest work.
“When it comes to requests for videos, I don’t think we’ve ever told anyone no,” Hilton said.
Finally, there’s jazz band, a non-conventional musical class that focuses on improvisation and solos.
“It’s not like in band where some people’s parents force them to do it. In jazz band, we all want to be there, working towards the same goal,” senior Darren Anderson said.
Band early in the morning has been proven to relieve stress, and kids are continually motivated by the “high” they get from performance.
“Music’s kind of addicting,” band teacher Timothy Kidder said.
While each of these students have different goals and class settings, they all struggle with the same obstacle of getting out of bed in the morning, but do it anyways in search of a good challenge and a sense of fulfillment.
“Zero hour classes are hard, especially in the winter, because I don’t get enough sleep, and I don’t really want to get out of the house,” senior Isa Wright said. “When I come to class, some days are bad, some days are not as bad, and some days are pretty solid.”
Teachers for each of the classes considered making the classes part of the normal school schedule at a point, but were made in the morning in order to avoid class conflicts.
“A lot of times kids have to choose between concert band or jazz band, and we want them to study both areas,” Kidder said.
Despite these challenges, kids continue to show up to the morning classes. This is not because they desperately need the offered credits, but because they sincerely enjoy doing it.
Journalism for example, has consistently proven its popularity, always filling up with at least 20 kids without trouble.
“We’ve never had a problem filling up our class,” Cox said.
Whether these classes are added back into the schedule in the future is still unknown at this time, but some, such as Journalism consider it a possibility.
“We’re here every morning, rain or shine… or snow,” Hilton said.
