STAGES THROUGH THE AGES: A HISTORY OF SEQUOIA

BY SASHA EFIMCHIK Staff Reporter

In the past thirty years Sequoia High School has gone through a lot of changes. The generations of Sequoia students over that time have seen drastic schedule changes and experimentation by the administration with assorted programs and classes.

Schedules:

this student would likely forget most of what she learned, which is why that schedule was eradicated.

Then, the administration introduced another type of block schedule. Under this scheme, days were designated as schedule A or B, without collaboration days. As a result, some weeks there would be three days of A schedule and other weeks there would be three days of B schedule.

In the 2000s, collaboration days were introduced, but they were originally on Mondays, rather than Wednesdays as they are now.

Perhaps we can expect more schedule changes in the future, given that some students are still not happy with the current schedule.

“Sometimes [...] sitting through the long block periods gets really tiring for an hour and forty minutes. It just gets boring after a while,” sophomore Cameron Reynolds said.

Historically, many Sequoia students chose instead to go off campus for lunch. For a time Sequoia had an open campus and it was allowed.

“At lunchtime, we could just walk across to Sequoia Station,” said Dilley. For reference, Sequoia Station was only built in 1992.

personalization,” Yezerski said. “The teachers would all teach the same kids [and] they would talk about them. There would be more adults in contact and communication about the students, the freshmen and sophomores.”

This program didn’t last for very long because Special Ed students at Sequoia didn’t achieve the state’s minimum goals for standard testing. When that happened, Program Improvement (PI) stepped in. PI required Sequoia to add remedial classes for students that were performing below grade level. This made it too difficult to continue the houses program because of the changes to student schedules that would be required. The Houses Program was discontinued.

There are several classes that are no longer taught at Sequoia. Sieling talked about a class called auto shop, which used to be where the B wing was, until the B wing was remodeled.

“[It was] vehicles, cars, learning how to work on the light stuff on the engine, changing your old oil filters, things like that,” said Dilley,

There were also more foreign language options, including German for quite a few years and Japanese for one or two.

There has been a surprising number of different approaches to class schedules at Sequoia over the years.

“The schedule was the same classes every day five days of the week, so no block schedule. I think generally most people had six periods,” Luke Sieling, class of 1993, said.

Then, just a few years later, the class schedule paradigm was entirely revamped.

“[We would have] three or four different classes for only half the year, and then we would switch to another three or four classes for the second half of the year,” Adrian Dilley, a Sequoia alumni, class of 1998, said.

“When I started, it was … what we call ‘four by four’ blocks. You only met with three classes [each] semester,” Joshua Yezerski, a teacher who has worked for Sequoia for 25 years, said.

However, this, too, came with a set of challenges. If, for instance, a student took math in the first semester of junior year and then in the second semester of senior year,

“[Lunch] was not free for everybody at the time like it’s free for everybody today,” Camille Erskine, class of 2012 and current Sequoia biology teacher, said. “I remember being really stressed at the end of each of my classes before lunch to have to run to get it.”

In the Fall of 2004, Sequoia introduced a program, organizing freshman and sophomore grades into four groups. These groups would have most classes together so that everyone got to know each other, which is similar to how the Sequoia academies work today (i.e., the Digital Arts Academy and the Health Careers Academy).

“Everybody [had] their own houses. It just meant that our freshman and sophomore year we had the same core group of teachers. That meant anybody else that was in the Quartz House had the same English teacher and the same history teacher,” Erskine said.

The houses were named after gems: they were called Amethyst, Jade, Emerald, Turquoise, and Quartz, Erskine’s own house.

“The idea was that you would get more

Finally, as most people know, there were no Ethnic Studies classes, Raven Circles, or flex times until as recently as 2021.

“Flex is good,” said Amaya Bijlani, a current freshman at Sequoia. “It’s a good time to study for tests that you have. Also some classes let you do whatever you want. [It’s] nice to relax and chill for a little.”

One thing that didn’t change is the community at Sequoia and how people feel supported.

“We had guidance counselors, so if we ever had issues or a problem, we could always go see [them], make an appointment or see an administrator. [There] have always been resources,” Dilley said.

“There’s a lot of resources at Sequoia, the TRC and other places that can help you. And the teachers are really supportive,” freshman Amaya Bijlani said.

Overall most of the changes at Sequoia related to schedules and class offerings. The feeling of support and community underlying the Sequoia student experience has stayed the same.