The senior Student Council members met on Friday, Oct. 1 with Superintendent Dr. Carl Cartwright for a listening session. The purpose of this meeting was to allow students to express their concerns for the current school year and they were allowed to speak freely about the matters they see as important. The students and Cartwright were sitting around a table in a conference room. 

Senior Luyen Pham says she hopes to see positive changes come from the session. 

“I really hope the workload is lower and is less than compared to (the beginning of the school year) because it’s so stressful right now,” Pham said. 

Despite the heavy topics of the meeting, many students said they were happy with the overall concept of the session. Senior Allie Borland feels hopeful that change is to come. 

“I felt very hopeful that change is going to happen. I also felt kind of stuck because there is only so much change that we can influence as students. We can hope that the people in our school whose job it is to make those changes and maintain them will follow through with their words,” Borland said. 

Some topics covered in the meeting were student workloads, homeroom in the morning, less motivation for students to join clubs due to meetings during lunch, and the overall lack of inspiration for many students at BHS. Cartwright says students’ voices are critically important for the successful operation of the school and district. 

“During my first year in Berlin, I met with students in grades 6-12 to listen to both their celebrations and concerns. The information I received from students during my first year was very beneficial to my understanding of Berlin High School and our school district as a whole. I have expanded listening sessions this year to include all students in our school district (grades K-12),” Cartwright said. 

There will be more meetings in the future for different grade levels and many are hopeful that this will bring change to BHS. Cartwright says the plan is to take the information learned from the sessions to a team of leaders and discuss the results and potential next steps.