A few weeks ago, at a Wednesday morning faculty meeting,  DCHS teachers were told about a unique opportunity, a chance to rewind their internal clocks to their high school selves and put themselves back into the shoes of a student . . . literally. Yes, teachers are being encouraged to return to their glory days by being a student for a day. They will attend class, complete assignments, eat lunch, and follow the rules as every student would. The ultimate goal: learn to empathize with our student body.

DCHS principal Mrs. Circle hatched this idea on a long drive home on a Saturday morning a month or so ago. “I come up with these crazy ideas and I just kind of go with them,” she shared. Every teacher, in the middle school and the high school, will spend a day as a student before the year is up. There are many goals and purposes behind this simulation, but the main objective is to discover what good instruction looks like. By the end of the year, Circle would like teachers to be able to discuss with each other what is working well in the classroom and what is not. “We need to experience what kids go through and see how these decisions are impacting what’s happening in the classroom,” she said.

A few teachers have already felt the effects of this simulation. Mr. Gilbert was the first to jump into the role of a student. “It was actually kind of fun to be back in school as a student for a day,” Gilbert said. He also shared that he is already benefitting from the experience: “I got to see some strategies and techniques that other teachers use in the classroom and I got to interact with some students I don’t typically have in class or even see.”

Mrs. Kirkwood has been formulating teacher schedules so each teacher will have a similar, but also different experience. Teachers will go to a variety of classes ranging from ICP, welding, and lifeguarding to French I, film literature, and English 12 AP. Circle said, “I want teachers to experience all different levels of classes. I also want them to see students in some CT [career tech] classes.”

The students are excited about this simulation probably more than the teachers are. Most think that this will be very helpful in the long run. “Having the teachers sitting in class with us have allowed us to feel more related to them in a sense,” senior Emma Wise says.

All of us here at DCHS are excited to see what will come out of this experiment that Mrs. Circle has set into motion.