Classes Long On Learning Scheduling Experiment Receiving Plenty Of A’S
The 11th-graders in Eric Edmonds’ history class talked about the United States Constitution for 88 minutes Thursday, much longer than their MTV-trained attention spans would be expected to muster.
But few, if any, stared at the clock or passed notes to their friends.
In fact, most of the Lake City High School students gave an A to block scheduling, a new system that makes classes about 30 minutes longer than normal.
“I worried about that,” Joshua Haberman, 16, said of the fear of boredom setting in during the long classes. “But it doesn’t really seem longer than it was last year.
“I really appreciate it. I couldn’t have taken debate this year and choir and not have to put off my requirements until my senior year.”
The Coeur d’Alene School Board approved a two-year block scheduling pilot program at Lake City in March. Under the new schedule, students take eight classes a semester. They take four 88-minute courses each day and rotate to another set of four classes the following day.
The program will be evaluated periodically and may eventually be expanded to Coeur d’Alene High School.
Program opponents had complained that the new schedule would decrease instruction time per academic subject 15 hours each semester.
But assistant principal Tom Mollgaard stressed that students are now in class 1,050 hours a year instead of the 990 mandated by the state.
“Even though in a particular class there’s less time, there’s more classes,” Mollgaard said.
Students said they liked having two days to finish homework under the rotating schedule. And many said the longer periods worked well for classes that involve labs, activities and discussions.
Kevin Quinn, 16, said he likes much of the new schedule, but said it’s tough to remember what he learns in pre-calculus when he’s only there every other day.
“Some classes are meant for blocks,” Quinn said. “And some you feel like you need to be in every day.”
And then there’s the issue of lunch. The new schedule cuts lunch to 25 minutes, down about 10 minutes from last year, much to the dismay of students.
“We would not mind having 10 minutes longer school if we could have 10 minutes longer lunch,” Haberman said.
To make up for lost time, some students munched on chips, pretzels and candy bars during Edmonds’ discussion of the Articles of Confederation Thursday.
Edmonds said he had to modify his teaching style for the longer periods, but said he is able to cover much more ground.
On Thursday, he lectured for nearly an hour and still had plenty of time to divide the class into groups to rate the merits of a federalist versus anti-federalist government. And during the last few minutes, he dimmed the classroom lights and had students watch glowing stars on the ceiling while listening to “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”
“Last year I had time to teach the content,” Edmonds said. “And just about the time I’d do the fun stuff, the application stuff, the bell would ring. We did all of that in one day, which makes it much more meaningful.”