Let’s imagine a typical day at Cleveland. You have finished your first period class, and are headed into your second period. The bell rings and class starts. After a while, you notice something seems off, like something is missing. When the bell rings signaling the end of this class, you finally put your finger on it: THE ANNOUNCEMENTS! Your teacher didn’t read them. You push it aside. One day can’t hurt, right? But it’s not just a one day mishap. The day after, your sixth period teacher doesn’t read them. The day after that, no announcements. The cycle keeps on going.

Sound familiar? Well, that’s because at Cleveland, announcements are rare. Did you know that your second and sixth period teachers are supposed to read them everyday so you can stay informed, no matter if it is an A or B day? If you didn’t, that only highlights the problem. You can just brush this off and say it doesn’t affect you, but sports, plays, after school clubs, college visits, scholarships, internships, job opportunities, career related learning opportunities, and other situations are all announced to the school through the bulletin. The sad thing is, we don’t know any of it.

As we know, the bulletin boasts a very important responsibility: it also informs the school of varsity sports. Additionally, the announcements inform upperclassmen of important and sometimes critical information for their future. From a small poll of upperclassmen, the majority said that their teachers never read the announcements and if they do it is quite rare.

“None of my teachers read the announcements, and as a senior, a lot of people don’t have classes during second period. That’s when the announcements are supposed to be read. Another problem is I don’t think all the information is always in the announcements,” said Lina Clark, senior.

I understand that reading the announcements takes time out of a teacher’s schedule and that sometimes it’s hard to get off track if you are in the middle of a lab or test. At the same time, I know that labs and tests don’t happen everyday. It might be hard to pull away from the teaching aspect of a class and have to deal with a topic that has nothing to do with your class, but reading the announcements isn’t for the teachers to hear. It’s to help the students. It is not fair to students if a teacher chooses to make the decision that their class is more important than the announcements. Students miss out on opportunities.

Further, it is unreasonable to ask students to read the bulletin outside of school, seeing as not all students have access to the internet at home. And even though the announcements are posted outside the main office on the reader board, going to read that board would either mean taking time during lunch, or getting to school before or staying a bit late. However, unless you read the reader board before school starts, you still would be unaware of what is going on during the day.

Teachers, please spend the five minutes to inform your students of what is going on in their school and the opportunities they have to explore. It will only take a small portion of your time, but it could mean so much to your students.