Revision After listening to the critique of my classmates, I feel I have made the necessary changes when it comes to the

clarity of my discourse community research. For some of the items in my research, I didnt offer any explanation. In an effort to provide better understanding for the reader, I had to clean up a little to make my point clearer. I also provided an interview with the senior counselor that allows the reader to better understand course registration and some of the problems that occur. While adding things and making changes, I still had to make sure that the flow and structure of the paper was not affected.

The discourse community I have chosen is my high schools guidance office. Ive had the privilege to work in the office as a student counselor. I was the first and only student approved by the Board of Education to work unpaid as a student counselor. I first began working with the guidance office during my sophomore year of high school. This gave me the chance to see how the community operates during the whole school year. The part of the year that was particularly interesting was registration time. At the beginning of every school year, start of a new semester, and the end of a school year, you can find any of my schools guidance counselors working hard to get registration done. It is their responsibility to make sure that all students get what they need when it is time to register for classes. Student are given course handbooks and signup sheets to take home and plan for the upcoming semester. The course handbooks gives instructions for each grade level on how the student should plan. The signup sheets required parental and guidance approval before it can be submitted. The signatures are needed to insure that the students are on the right track as it

relates to courses they need. This process should make things easier for the counselors, but that is not always the case. Some students might have missed registration day or even just transferred from a different school, and that extends the process. I interviewed the Senior Counselor (Baretta Smith) to see how transferring students and missing registration day affect the registration process.

Question: How do transferring students affect the registration process? Dr. Smiths answer: When a student transfers from a different school it takes us a while to receive their transcripts from that school. Upon receiving the transcripts there is an evaluation process to see if the courses are transferable. Sometimes even if the course is transferable, the course may only transfer as a half credit. If the class only transfers as a half credit, the student will have to retake that class. After the guidance office evaluates the transcript, the student may begin course registration

Question: How does a student missing registration day affect the process? Dr. Smiths answer: Although transferring students can make the process lengthier, we dont get a lot of transfer students during registration time. We do however receive a lot of late signup sheets from students who miss registration day. This makes our job harder and requires us to make an even larger effort to finish our course registration in the time allotted. This also makes the process harder on the student who misses registration day. If he/she submits a late signup sheet, they may not get into the classes they need or the electives they would like to have.

The interview only explains part of the registration process. The guidance counselors are human, so there are mistakes to be made. I know of several cases where students were put into the wrong class because of a course code mistake. Course codes are class names made up of seven digits. You can find the codes in the Course Code Bible which is called the matrix. Within the matrix you can find over one thousand classes available to students. The matrix can only be viewed online with a special code by the principal and members of the guidance office. It takes discipline to read the matrix. Why? The work for class registration has to be finished in three days before the start of each semester. In that time period it is the counselors duty to register over eight hundred students for classes. It is very common to make a mistake after looking at numbers for three consecutive twelve hour days. When a mistake is made, the computer will make adjustments, but I may not be helpful to the student. If the process is moving along too slowly, the principal has the authority to create a support staff for help. The selection process is pretty easy. The principal selects five members from the technology department to be led by the curriculum coordinator. It is very rare for the principal to assemble a support staff. During this period of unrest, it is extremely difficult for the counselors to go back and forth to their different offices to communicate. At the beginning of everyday the counselors are required to be logged into their school email accounts. Whenever they log in, they must also turn on their sound notification. Since they are already working on the computers, this makes communication much easier and faster. Even though communication is available for the counselors, they can only use it if there is a major problem with someones schedule. The only problems that are considered serious are: student failed all four courses from the previous semester, credits from a different school did not transfer, or the student will not graduate on time.

If an email is sent, it should contain the students id number (seven digits) and the problem number (three digits). No matter how much experience one has had with class registration, they all seem to dislike that time of year. I was the youngest in the office, so I really disliked registration my first time around. For Ms. Pamela Lewis, who was freshman and junior counselor for ten years, really disliked the process but after a while knew to expect for the process to be long. Dr. Baretta Smith started as senior counselor the same year I became student counselor. Dr. Smith had never dealt with course registration and neither had I; subsequently, the learning process was much easier for the both of us. Learning the ways of the guidance office wasnt difficult at all. There were there book we had to learn and use daily: the Course Bible, the Matrix, the Book of Transcript. Throughout the whole process we really helped one another learn.