The Plaid Press

Sweat pools around your entire body as your heart rate beats like it has never before. You just pulled off a full sprint from the air-conditioned counseling office across campus to the “M” building to only find a handwritten note taped to the door: TA Spot Filled.
This is not a bootcamp. It is the routine students face in securing a Teacher’s Assistant (TA) position in the middle of the brutal fall heat, and this is why we need to transition the TA search online.
Think about it. We turn in homework on Canvas, check our grades on Home Access Center, and sign up for events using Google Forms. Yet, for some reason, finding a TA spot at Granada Hills Charter still requires a sweaty and chaotic footrace.
The campus essentially turns into an arena, and summer in the San Fernando Valley only makes it more brutal. August weather logs from the National Weather Services had reports that temperatures regularly hit up to 90 degrees. Sprinting around in that environment is a legitimate safety hazard.
In fact, a PubMed study by José González-Alonso shows that working too much in the heat leads to your heart having to work twice as much in order to keep pushing you to walk across the campus, which will only lead to physical and mental exhaustion.
The layout of GHC only makes things worse. The moment a student is released from the counseling office, they have to sprint across the unshaded quad to secure the popular teachers almost everyone loves. Running in 90-degree heat is not just tiring, it feels like a punishment.
“My only option was to take a TA period,” junior Inaaya Chowdhury said, “So I spent all of my second period walking around the campus. Keep in mind, there’s no shade, I am in the heat, just sweating.”
Students are not the only ones trapped in this chaotic system. Teachers also have to bear the burden on this scramble.
With the power to only have one TA, teachers are forced to act like security guards. They have to manage a full room of kids while constantly turning away dozens of exhausted students who secretly cross their fingers they can strike gold by being their TA.
Fixing this chaos is incredibly simple, GHC needs an online directory. Instead of racing across campus with a pen, paper, and a cup of dreams, the TA selection process should be through a school website.
While this goal may be difficult to implement as not every student and staff would be willing to enact this with the difficult nature of online material, it is important to consider the potential benefits this can serve by turning the search for a TA into an organized system for the teachers and less of a stress for the students.
Students would be able to see which TA spots are available online along with when the deadlines occur, preferably in the end of August. This also allows teachers to sign up whether they need a TA along with being able to review the applications digitally based on actual student qualifications, completely abolishing the “first-come first-serve” race.
It is time for GHC to step out of the arena. Our lives are completely digital, so it makes zero sense to preserve an archaic system that punishes students.
GHC needs to launch an online portal to look out for student health, restore administrative sanity, and end the hallway Hunger Games once and for all.