By Kaitlin Zieser
I had the opportunity to go to Cedar Valley Christian, a private school in Cedar Rapids, for a day to see how their school compares to MVHS. While many things were similar, like schedule and classroom sizes, there were many differences too.

A big difference has to do with the size and location of the school itself. The kindergarten through 12th grade school takes place in what was primarily used as a church building.

Like many school buildings, the classrooms follow a basic circular layout, however one side of the hallway is for elementary and some middle school, and the other side is for high school classes.

With limited class rooms comes an interesting system. A science classroom also doubles as an accounting classroom, and Spanish is shared with family/ adult living materials. Some teachers even teach more than one subject. Because of the school being K-12 in the same area, there was also no bell system to begin and end class, which was also a big change.

Another unique thing about Cedar Valley Christian is lunch time. At MVHS we all go to the lunchroom and wait in line to get our food that the school makes for us. At CVC this is not the case. The school does not provide lunch for students, instead they bring their own sack lunches every day. However, new to the school this year is Hy-Vee food is brought in 2-3 days of the week. Even with this new food system, most students still choose to bring their own lunches to school.

The biggest difference I saw during my visit was student-teacher relationships. While some teachers had very strong relationships with their students, there were also a number of teachers who did not seem to. Several times it was very clear that students did not get along well with their teachers. As students, I think we all have times where we like to mess with our teachers for one reason or another, however it seemed like that was the goal of some classes.

By shadowing CVC I got to experience going to a small school, where everyone truly does know each other. With the school being a private religious school it also allowed me to attend some classes that we don’t offer here, one of which ended up being my favorite class.

Even though Cedar Valley is a good school, the experience did make me realize how great going to MVHS is. We have lunches every day made for us, we have lots of options for classes we wish to take, and our teachers really do make it a goal to personally know each one of us on a personal level.