Main Street is a staple at Greenhills. It connects the various classrooms through a central hallway, leading all the way down from the Borders Center for the Athletics to the Campbell Center for the Performing Arts. It serves as not only the main route through the building but also as a tool to navigate our winding hallways. However, that is the only help we receive in being guided throughout the school, since room numbers have become increasingly irrelevant and are confusing in general. Our solution: create more manageable room numbers and straightforward hallway names.
The primary issue with the school’s current layout is that it lacks any organization beyond Main Street. Despite the smaller size of the school, it can still be incredibly confusing at times. The numbering of rooms doesn’t follow a predictable pattern and room numbers are ignored altogether. Instead, an informal naming system has been created by the student body, with room names based on the room’s teacher. This system works great for older students who have had these teachers before in their time at Greenhills, but it can still be a challenge for new students, such as incoming 6th and 9th graders, and guests to the building. This is something that could create problems for prospective families touring the school and visitors coming in for events. During Gryphon Ambassador events, visiting families are confused by the room numbers, with student ambassadors attempting to use maps and give confusing directions.
Our first solution is to create more hallway names. Naming additional hallways can help give students a clearer picture of how the school fits together. It would help grow school spirit, with students grouped into memorable areas instead of meaningless spaces, and would also help with communication and navigation. Another idea would be to format room numbers in clusters, just like the locker number system. For example, classrooms near the 6th-grade forum could be labeled 6-1, 6-2, and so on, while those around the 7th-grade forum could follow the same pattern, going 7-1, 7-2, etc. This could help people navigate the hallways, as even if they don’t know the actual room, they would know the direction and area where it is located.
Recently, we have taken steps in the right direction by adding more signs throughout the school, which would mainly help visitors. However, these signs are not the solution, but the start of something bigger. More signs could go hand-in-hand with new hallway names. These changes would benefit everyone, but on a day-to-day basis would make students’ lives much easier. Students would have an easier time finding classrooms, especially middle schoolers who have to travel all over the building for some electives, venturing into some areas that they have never actually seen before.
Naming the hallways can be fun as well. We could hold a vote for some names or allow them to be named after influential members of the Greenhills community who we want to embed into the school culture. Another option would be to auction the hallways off to raise money for the school. If people would be willing to pay, it could help fund future endeavors and increase school spirit in one fell swoop.
While all of these changes sound great in theory, do we actually need them? For some, it might make the school even more confusing and provide little improvement in navigating the hallways. The real value of this change in our system is building our community. These changes would make it stronger and bring us closer together. Greenhills prides itself on being different from the pack. Creating shared memories and a collective culture will bolster our tight-knit community in ways that are different from the normal school. Our community is what makes our school truly “one of a kind”, so let’s find ways to grow our shared spirit and make new memories.
As the school continues to grow and expand, these changes are more crucial than ever. We need to find ways of updating our system and how we do things, instead of just sticking with whatever confusing systems we currently have in place. We want the school to be a welcoming place for everyone, not a place that confuses those who enter for the first time, and we hope that these changes will guide every visitor, student, and faculty member as they make their way down Main Street.
