Walking in, you reminisce about the old Lincoln Trail Elementary School. The young students and the tiny chairs that used to reside there. When kids used to finger paint and use their duck tales and bubbles in the hallway, the nostalgia all comes back especially for the students who left Lincoln Trail in fifth grade to return in ninth grade.
The old Lincoln Trail is the Bruin Academy’s new home. It is the secondary campus of Central Hardin High School for freshman students while Central is in the final stages of construction for the next couple of years, and time will tell how it impacts our students.
“The experience has been just fine,” assistant principal Matt Baucum explained. “Everything here happens pretty much like it did at Central Hardin. We’re all able to get to know each other a lot better so I think it has created better relationships without having such a large school and environment.”
While many of us in the community were skeptical about the decision, there have been some positives to the second campus.
“It’s good in the small school ways by being in a small-knit community. You get to know the kids a little more,” English teacher Paul Gray said. “There’s a little more control here, which can be a good thing for freshmen.”
A recent survey conducted by AP Gov students showed that 57% of the freshmen like not being in a construction zone.
Coming from middle school to high school, it can be hard to adjust without being separated from the rest of the school. Some may agree that the hallways at the academy are less crowded at least. Some of the students may feel isolated, however; the positive thing to come from that is the kids can get used to how Central Hardin works without outside influences from upperclassmen.
“I don’t like it. It feels isolated and cut off; feels cut off like you’re still in middle school,” freshman Jackson Luttrell said.
The kids can feel like they are not in high school and it can be hard to interact with upperclassmen, especially for students who are looking to go to the EC3 Academy. Those students will only have one normal year of high school. In addition, being on a different campus can cause difficulty in being involved in club/extracurricular activities.
“I do like it here. The only thing I don’t like is like the kids were saying, there’s an isolation from the main campus, there’s just a disconnect for the kids,” math teacher Samantha Dale noted.
“We are not with the big dogs,” freshman Jordan Fairbanks said.
The Bruin Academy students were worried about missing out on Central’s most prized possession: PowerHour, which can be a fun time if you keep up with all your schoolwork. Freshmen have an intervention system called “WIN.” It is a 40-minute period to go to your teachers for help.
The freshmen students have had to go back and forth from the main campus to Bruin Academy. In some of the pathways, kids are constantly traveling on buses. Does this affect the educational process?
“I don’t think it interrupts our education. The transfer from school to school and waiting for kids to arrive gives us time to work on missing work or our bell ringers,” Josefina Carter explained.
There are positives and negatives to every new situation; however, Bruin Academy seems to be going better than we thought it would be. They are learning and adjusting to their classes as well as they can be. In the future, students will face similar challenges transitioning to the main campus, but we will worry about that when the time comes. As for now, our “Baby Bruins,” as called by freshmen counselor Paige Wilson, are content with being at Bruin Academy and being set up for success.
