Arrowhead High School Hosts Open-House for Parents

Thursday, September 23 marked Arrowhead High School’s open house event, hosted at both campuses.  Parents were invited to follow a shortened version of the child’s schedule to view a ten-minute presentation for each class.  

The first presentation at South began at 6:10pm.  Each period lasted ten minutes and was followed by a five-minute passing period, and ended at 8:20pm. The first presentation at North began ten minutes later, at 6:20 (mimicking the regular staggering of schedules for students). This allowed parents enough time to get from south to North Campus with time to spare.  Similarly, each North Campus period lasted 10 minutes and was followed by a five-minute passing period. 

This same format and schedule was followed in 2019; according to Thomas Fechter, a functions teacher, “COVID kept it from happening last year” in 2020.

This year, the art department collaborated to create a combined slideshow of all the different classes offered in the department, followed by a “video of a raku firing from 2018 at North Campus.” Raku is a traditional Japanese style of pottery in which the piece is removed from the kiln at maximum temperature and cools rapidly.

Fechter expected ten to twelve parents per class to attend, making a total somewhere from 60-72.  He had “a few slides and (his) Canvas page to show them.”  

Jacque Jurewicz, a biology teacher, was not expecting many parents “because the Delta variant is spreading quite a bit.”  

Another conflict Jurewicz faced regarded scheduling; on a normal school day, she has to travel back and forth from North to South campus three times.  The five-minute window does not allow for that, so she will not be attending two of the allotted periods.  She had a hands-on plan for the event. In her South Campus classroom, she had four stations planned: one with a computer to play the video she made for last year’s open house, a second with the lab that students are currently working on, a third with microscopes, and a fourth with a syllabus.  In her North Campus classroom, she planned on introducing herself, the curriculum, and the current lab students are working on.