During the 2016-2017 school year, cadet teaching rules will be much different than they have in the past. Students will be able to request areas of interest and skill rather than teachers, and GPA requirements have increased, which puts many students at a disadvantage.

In past years, students applying to cadet have been able to request teachers they would like to cadet for, but things are changing with the coming school year. Students will now only be able to request subjects they are interested and skilled in rather than teachers they would enjoy cadeting for. This puts students at a disadvantage, because they could potentially end up spending a semester working closely with a teacher they don’t know or don’t get along well with.

The GPA requirement to cadet teach at South has also been raised to a 3.0, the requirement to cadet teach off-campus a 2.5, and only seniors will now be able to take cadeting.

These rules have been implemented to discourage people from taking cadeting as a blow-off class, and rather as a real commitment for people who are interested in teaching as a profession, and while this motive is justified, I question whether administration really understands what they’re doing.

High school classes, especially senior classes, are stressful. When you add family, social, financial, and college stresses on top of that, high school students really do have a lot on their plates. Sometimes we need a blow-off class or two to balance it out.

Cadeting has provided an opportunity for upperclassmen to have a break from rigorous classes throughout their day, as well as a chance to work with teachers who may not teach classes in their level whom they may never see after graduation.

Though changing requirements for cadeting makes sense from the stance of an administrator, it is unfortunate how little time they spend taking the viewpoint of students into consideration when we are the ones affected by these revisions.

While cadeting is a good class for people who are interested in becoming teachers, and a great benefit for teachers who need some help around their classroom, it is also a good class for students who need a little bit of time to relax during their day and teachers who just need a bit of assistance from time to time and whose class may benefit from the knowledge of a past student.

Changes in cadeting cause disadvantages to students for several reasons, and I hope that after seeing the effects next school year they are rethought.