Thomas Radesky remembers the time he first discovered his CHS advisory for the next four years—his forum. It was transition day 2024, and all of the 8th-graders from every middle school in AAPS went to their new high schools to visit for the afternoon. Radesky’s was CHS.
He walked into the Craft Theater with all of his friends from Slauson Middle School and sat down in one of the black, foldable chairs. The counselors told everyone to flip around their nametags, so he did. There it was—the Vial forum, Radesky’s new home.
At CHS, forum placement is not a random process. A team of school officials, made up of the counselors, some teachers and an administrator, strategically attempts to set each forum and student up for success. By choosing one’s forum, the team essentially closes the door to the student’s forum fate.
“Forum is historically one of the pillars of what makes us unique,” CHS counselor Brian Williams said. “It’s kind of an opportunity to work as a school outside of the core curriculum, and look at the social, emotional and civilian parts of life.”
If you look back to the spring of your 8th-grade year, you might remember getting a Google form about coming to CHS. You might not have realized it then if you didn’t read the fine print, but those questions were to help place you in a forum—a longstanding tradition that the counselors use to help the team with the decision-making process. The counselors also share the students’ responses with their new forum leader so they can get to know the student.
The decision depends on many factors, such as trying to keep an even ratio of male-identifying to female-identifying and energetic to lower-energy, a variety of middle schools and having students that split-enroll in different schools.
Here’s where forum placement gets confusing: split-enrollment. Williams explains that most split-enrollers will be placed in a lunch forum because it is the most flexible time that most students can attend. Most classes in the middle of the day at the “big schools” (Pioneer High School, Huron High School, and Skyline High School) tend to be beginner or intermediate-level classes. So, by their sophomore or junior year, most students are able to go to their forums during lunch because they will be taking the more advanced class that takes place at the beginning or end of the day.
However, this isn’t always the case, and the counselors try to pay attention to that. For some split-enrollers, a hybrid forum may work better because their schedule gets so complicated that they can attend forum shifts every year. Williams thinks that there will be fewer hybrid forums in the coming years because it was originally an idea to help with the flow back into school during the COVID-19 years. He states that fewer students are in need of hybrid forums each year.
As a CHS counselor, Williams feels responsible for making sure that no forum starts out with groups of friends that got placed in the same forum. He thinks it’s a good idea to have friends in your forum starting out, but not so many that there’s a group of students in the corner that already know each other and aren’t willing to branch out. There has to be a good reason for a student to go into a forum already being close friends with others coming into that forum.
“We want to get students out of their comfort zone, allow them opportunities to meet new students,” Williams said. “The easiest way to do that is if they don’t really know anyone. So we’re kind of forcing a new experience in a weird way.”
Switching forums, as most CHS students might already know, is a pretty rare event. The counselors want the forum to be a good experience for everyone; however, they want students to take into account that the “real world” is not perfect, and making the most out of an environment that isn’t your style is a great skill to have. However, when scheduling concerns arise or there is a big problem in a students’ forum, the counselors will consider a switch.
Williams sees that often it takes a full year to feel comfortable in a forum, and sometimes students just need to get involved. The way that students approach a forum is very important to how they experience it.
Growing up, Williams’s high school didn’t have any system like a forum. He even says the bigger schools don’t have the same experience; however, they have similar concepts like “Skytime” at SHS. He and his co-counselor, Missy Herskowitz, like that the forum at CHS exists and are always looking for ways to make the forum better.
“The beautiful thing about form is if it doesn’t feel like it’s quite working, let’s change how it feels,” Williams said. “Do something different as a forum. And you guys have the leeway and the freedom to do that—that’s what community is all about.”
