Everyday at lunch, Green Hope High School looks busy and full of life. Tables look packed, cafeteria lines become lengthy and everything seems normal at first glance. But if you stop and pay attention, you will notice that something feels off: not everyone is eating, not everyone is even in the cafeteria, so what are students actually doing during lunch at Green Hope?
On a normal day at Green Hope, students have four periods. Each period is one hour and 30 minutes, and the first period starts at 7:25 am. Every student has their first two periods before lunch and then two periods after lunch. Lunch break starts at 10:24 am, after the second period, and ends at 11:18 am. Lunch is also broken into two halves, A half and B half. In these fifty minutes students are free to do whatever they want as long as they are on campus, unless they have an off-campus lunch pass that gives them permission to go outside of campus for lunch.
Additionally, students have a general smart lunch policy for every class. Smart lunch is where students go to a class during lunch to get instructional time. Each subject has two days per week where they have a designated smart lunch for one half of lunch. For example, smart lunches for math classes are on Tuesday for A-half, and Thursday for B-half. Another important aspect of the policy is priority day. The Green Hope policy for priority smart lunch states, “If a student is assigned a SMART Lunch tutorial on a “Priority Day”, that student’s attendance is mandatory. Instead, students who have demonstrated academic and behavioral responsibility will have the opportunity to make the decision that is best for them.” The key benefit that students can get from smart lunches is that “students who attend at least three total tutorial sessions per quarter (two before interims and one after interims) will earn an incentive for that class”. The incentive this year is that the student’s lowest minor grade gets dropped. One problem with smart lunch is that if not enough students attend, then Wake County will transition Green Hope to block lunch, taking away the current free 50 minute lunch.
Eshwar Yakkala (‘29), a student at Green Hope, discussed in an interview that lunch period is more of a free period for him. He said, “I usually finish eating my lunch in less than twenty minutes and then I walk around the school with my friends.” He also shared that inside the school it is usually crowded so he goes with his friends and eats outside, still on campus. Yakkala concluded the interview by suggesting that lunch period isn’t really for lunch; “Lunch break is long because it’s the only break we get, it’s not just to eat lunch.”
Bilal Mehdi (‘29), another student at Green Hope, shared his perspective in an interview that he doesn’t even think of lunch period as a time to eat lunch. He mentioned, “I eat my lunch in the morning and then I eat when I get back home.” During lunch he always walks around with his friends, goes into the library, or goes to smart lunch.
In other high schools, lunch is split up into parts where some students go eat for the first lunch and then the rest of the students eat for the second half while the first group of students goes to class. Unlike these schools, Green Hope gives students the freedom to do whatever they want for this period of time, they can meet whoever they want, and go wherever they want on campus.
