Our 10th periods should be used for relaxation or homework, it should be up to us what we do with our time!

    We have recently been ordered to use a program called Freckle. It is a math program that many of us dislike. I have talked to numerous students at our school, in all 6th, 7th, and 8th grade and multiple of us have said very negative things about it.

These include:

- "Freckle doesn't help anybody." 

- "I feel like Freckle just holds me back in math."

- "It's useless."

    And many more arguments that just further our point, it's even worse that being required to do Freckle threatened to make our Orchestra, Band, and Choir move our Select Strings, Jazz band, and Honor Choir practices to after school, when many of us need to go home, play sports, or participate in clubs, just so that we would use the program for more minutes in a week since some kids couldn't keep up with the required amount of time. Sometimes they even alter our Friday's schedule just to have more time to use this program, cluttering our schedule, causing confusion, and taking time from most of our other periods. We need to stop being forced to use Freckle! 

    My personal experience with Freckle, in the beginning of the year I played Violin in Orchestra and Select Strings, and sang in Chorus. This took up A,B,C,D,E, and F days. I was too busy being productive with my time and learning advanced skills to worry about math that was too easy and didn't match up with my learning level.

    Freckle has done nothing but hold me down. Sometimes I would have to sit in the Orchestra storeroom for 30 minutes or so, using Freckle and learning nothing, while I missed playing important music. Now, since I quit Chorus to have a 10th period for 2 of the days in our cycle, I go back to my classroom for the 10th period those two days and two days only. I WOULD finish my homework quickly, and read a book, but I am told to "Do my Freckle". This stops me from being more productive and furthering my learning level, and when all of my classmates get to go outside that rare occasion, and get that fresh breath of air that rare day that it is nice out and our teacher lets them go, I am told to sit there and "Do my Freckle" and be less productive with my time than if I went outside and cleared my head, since I am not able to use the program other days. 

    Now you can see why I as a person am so against being forced to use the program, and I am sure that there are other people who relate to my experience. In a school of hundreds of children, why don't we have a better program, or even better, a free 10th period to use our OWN time on? 

    We need to stop being forced to use Freckle!