No Bells - part two. Focus

I ran across an article: School Bells Interfere With Learning but unfortunately it has some points backwards. It misinterprets much of the what and why of bells and classes. Let me explain.

"... because we partition students into neat packages called subjects, they are implicitly taught that learning is something we do in compartments."

Actually, this is called focus (or uni-tasking) and we aren't partitioning the students at all. We're separating the subjects for three reasons: so the students can concentrate on one thing at a time, so that the most competent teachers for each subject can teach them and so the students don't have to have the exact same schedule of learning - each is able to specialize in his or her own way.

It's a NEW IDEA called differentiating.

Since students aren't going through the day in lockstep with all of their classmates, we must keep to a schedule so that everyone's time and preparation can be utilized most effectively.

If you try and introduce a little bit of another subject in your subject, students object, saying "This isn't English, Mr. Wees. Teach us Mathematics." (I've actually had students tell me that). Where in the real world is learning sectioned off like this?

Frankly, everywhere. Learning is always focused on one topic. When was the last time you attended a college class called "College Algebra and British Lit as used in Cobol programming?" Teaching at the elementary grades is cross-curricular by nature. The higher you rise, the more likely you're going to specialize. Not only is each student's course mix different but the levels are, too. One freshman may take Honors Algebra2, Spanish 3 and H.English but the other takes CP English, CPAlgebra1 and Spanish1.

Then, there's competence. I can teach Physics and any level of math, but I'd be fooling myself if I thought I could do Biology, History or Latin. I hate it when some other teachers try to teach math because they invariably screw up and I'm sure the English teachers would complain about my writing style. Even within a certification area, teachers have strengths and weaknesses. Some teachers are great with Geometry and others aren't.  Calculus is beyond many and some don't have the patience for pre-algebra or consumer math.

"Mathematics do English (and other languages) when they explain their discoveries to other people. Biologists use geography to decide where to start their research. All of what we learn is interconnected, and more of these connections need to made obvious to the students. This is not easy to do in a school with nine 45 minute separate blocks."

Ignoring the grammatical weirdness, this is the crux of his problem. Just because we are dealing with a vast interconnected world doesn't mean that the best way to learn is by studying the whole thing all at once. The connections cannot be made clear to students until the students understand the two (or more) things that are being connected.

There is also a huge difference between "learn" and "use." I use English to explain my thoughts on math but that doesn't mean I can teach English and it doesn't mean that mixing math and English will improve the learning of either. (Educational pundits went to school but that doesn't mean they know how to fix it, either, but I digress.)

The argument that connections can't be made in 45 minute blocks is precisely the reason many schools went to 90 blocks. Not that it helped anything.

"Maybe we should even rethink how we schedule kids, and consider other instructional models. There are schools where there are no bells, no classes like what you would see in a traditional school, just kids (and adults) learning."

I want a school with no classes.

Cliche alert! 

When will otherwise well-meaning people realize that the vast bulk of their students are not "natural students" who, "unlike themselves", have greater interest outside of the classroom than in?

There's a reason that these schools are few ... they don't work for most kids.

The "no bells, no classes" scenario ... there's also no learning. These schools are filled with the spoiled rotten children of money. In return for the kid's chance to pretend to learn, the schools pretend to give them an education, whitewashing over the fact that the kids have little interest in anything and school is below "nothing" on their lists.

The teachers think they're being "cutting edge" and "understanding" and the school is "so 21st century" that your head might burst from the fuzzy good feelings. I've seen this kind of school go straight into the tank. Fortunately for the kids, their parents have plenty of money because that education isn't cutting the mustard.

Those kids who can do the "unschooling" kind of thing are the ones who could pick up a "Perl for Dummies" book and teach themselves programming over the weekend. They also tend to have parents who take the place of the school.

Those aren't your kids. Or my students.

Priorities

Just a quick question ...

With everything that goes on in a public school these days, why has actual teaching been shuffled so far down the list of priorities, behind:

• Fire Drill/Police Dog Drug Search
• Professional Development
• Addressing Damage in the Bathrooms
• Sports in all its forms (mostly afternoon disruptions, but we're coming up on skiing and snowboard season, and spring has golf ... 8am meets and competitions are the norm.
• "Pardon the interruption for this announcement."
• Service Organizations.
• Class Fundraising going door-to-door.
• Class Meetings 
• Pep Rallies
• Anti-Bad Things Assemblies
• Teacher Education/School Visits/conferences/workshops
• Principal doing Teacher Evaluations (Major disruption when he sits clicking his laptop)
• Anything the Administration finds on their calendars.
• Send the kids to the office if they're late ... to get a pass and come back to class.
• Talk to the kid in trouble, set up a detention ... for missing class.
• Meeting with the State College Scholarship rep who tells them they need to be sure they're attending class. Said meeting happens during class.
• Anti-Drug counselor pulls them to have them sit in her comfy chair and eat cookies.
• Volunteer Fire Department Rescue calls.
• Field Trips for non-academic things.
• Family vacations and appointments.
• Illnesses that mysteriously occur on test days.
• Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice. Inservice.

"Give them the assignment so they can make up the work. We'll be out all week."

"This is the only time we could schedule 'Bodybuilders Against Drugs' and I didn't want to let the opportunity pass by."

"I think everyone in the department should attend this workshop."

You might point out that teacher education and workshops and school visits are intended to improve the overall teaching and improve the school. I worry that the professional development is explicitly expected to take a couple of years to come to full fruition ... and this is the only education these kids will get.

Sure, I can take the long view, but what of that senior?  What will replace this year for her if we continually mess with it? It's part of what lead to my previous rant about research.  I WANT to use the best ideas, but I don't care to spend a lot of time trying to winnow out the chaff and uncover the lone jewel of future glory at the expense of the students I already have.

I'm expressly NOT wishing for repetitive, boring, lock-step, soul-crushing monotony. This isn't a prison and can't be run like one. That's not what this is about. It's about predictability and finding security in knowing what's coming and when, and that school, unlike many of their homes, is about habits of mind and habits of behavior and learning everything you can while it's still free.

You might think it silly, but knowing that "Every Friday is a quiz in History" is actually comforting to a majority of students. The worst thing in a high school is to change everything suddenly. When you call "everyone out to the courtyard for an impromptu dance to relieve stress", you frustrate everyone who was just about to get to work, you get the ADHD kids going on something new at the exact wrong time, and you raise the anxiety levels of everyone.

It's easy to sit in an office and look at a shiny new workshop proposal and find a blank day on the calendar to schedule it in isolation, but that's messing with the rhythm of the school. When there's no rhythm in a school, there's no soul and no quiet confidence.


When did teaching move so far down the list of priorities?

Missing the Point.

http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/

Shadowing a student is a valuable idea, but she misses the point in the end.

I have made a terrible mistake.
I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. 

Which is a fine idea ... for an experienced teacher. The newbie? Not so much. That first-year teacher is just out of college and has no sense of what is appropriate for 15yo students, and probably would miss or misunderstand the important details in all of the other data and facts.

So, this teacher-turned-Learning Coach shadowed 2 kids ... for a day.

My class schedules for the day

The schedule that day for the 10^th grade student:
7:45 – 9:15: Geometry
9:30 – 10:55: Spanish II
10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
11:45 – 1:10: World History
1:25 – 2:45: Integrated Science
The schedule that day for the 12^th grade student:
7:45 – 9:15: Math
9:30 – 10:55: Chemistry
10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
11:45 – 1:10: English
1:25 – 2:45: Business

Here we begin to get the glimmer of the real problem. The block schedule was sold to faculty in schools as an improvement on some or all of the following grounds:

• The students could focus on fewer things throughout the day, making for more deliberateness. The phrase "Mile wide and inch deep" is usually tossed in here, as well.
• They'd have fewer passing times and those minutes could be filled with instruction or projects or meaningful discussion or labs.
• 80 minutes was a better chunk of time.
• Teachers would have fewer preps.

In some buildings, including ours, the change was implemented over vacation and the teachers returned to a different schedule. "Surprise!"

• It's better. We decided. The schedule has changed.

Not a single thought was spared to ask whether 9th graders should be in 80 minute classes or whether Special Education students would benefit from the extended periods. Nobody considered whether having 8 periods for which students could have one or two "free" periods was better than requiring the students to have four academic courses per day and no down time. And nobody dared to question whether 80 minutes was too much math for one day.

Anyway, back to our Coach.

Key Takeaway #1
Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

Thinking is exhausting. Focus is exhausting. Learning is exhausting.  If you're doing it right, education is hard, learning new things is difficult.  I'm not saying that students shouldn't move more, but that's not the issue.

Block scheduling is predicated on the idea that students will be allowed to focus on fewer things for longer periods, that mere "rote memorizing" of content would be subordinated to the intense, "deeper" thinking, critical thinking and problem solving.

If our coach could change the past, she would have implemented "a mandatory stretch halfway through the class", installed "a Nerf basketball hoop on the back of my door and encourage kids to play in the first and final minutes of class" and have built in "a hands-on, move-around activity into every single class day." 

In other words, 80 minutes is too long and teachers need to pretend it's really two 40 minute periods ... or 75 minutes, with a break in the middle and some games at the end.

The most telling comment? "Yes, we would sacrifice some content to do this – that’s fine."

Really? The block schedule selling point "Better use of time" goes out the window.  Her point in her article, and presumably to the teachers in her building, "I was so tired by the end of the day, I wasn’t absorbing most of the content, so I am not sure my previous method of making kids sit through hour-long, sit-down discussions of the texts was all that effective."

Instead of questioning whether or not students should get more of a break between classes, or have a free period to unwind, she is willing to advocate for giving that free time in the middle of the only time her students have to be with her. 

Key Takeaway #2
High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.

So change that, if you feel that it's more appropriate to your discipline. The idea that you need to start
every class with discussion, blitzkreig-like mini-lessons is entirely dependent on what you're doing rather than an appropriate plan for every day.

Likewise, worrying overmuch about the length of time you speak (and setting a timer) is not terribly good practice. If you're talking *at* the students rather than talking *with* them, you have a problem. A good lecture, on the other hand, can keep everyone in the room engaged for hours. A constant droning lecture, like pre-recorded videos in a "flipped classroom" or a Rocketship academy or Khan Academy, won't work for much more than as a substitute in your absence.

The bigger issue is the admin's constant refrain that the teacher needs to fill the 80 minutes with something. My admin, for instance, mention that we should "teach bell to bell." I am certain that everyone reading this can also hear the drumbeat of "testing", "accountability", and the political pressure to "excel" and "fire the bad teachers". Remember, too, that one promise of block scheduling was that MORE would be learned, MORE would be retained, and MORE would be understood.

Key takeaway #3You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.

I lost count of how many times we were told be quiet and pay attention ... you start to feel sorry for the students who are told over and over again to pay attention ... that need to just disconnect, break free, go for a run,  ... That is how students often feel in our classes, ... because they have been sitting and listening most of the day already. They have had enough.

And what is part of that cause? In my mind, it's that we seem to have this idea that 80 minutes of math with no time between periods to unwind is a good idea. I am impressed that the schedule quoted above has 45 minutes for lunch - we have 22 - and that there is 15 minutes between classes - we have 3.

I'm going to ignore her comments about sarcasm, because they don't really matter to this discussion beyond the fact that kids not paying attention is a problem for us and that the whole multi-tasking thing is messing the students up something fierce.

We do need to pay attention to that but also remember that kids are kids, they're not allowed to vote, drink, smoke, drive a car, rent, sign a contract, go to war, or make decisions that matter ... and they're learning something entirely new.  Why should we be surprised that Johnny is not focused on the math for 80 straight minutes?

We need to remember that not every kid will be as enthusiastic about math, or learn at the same pace, or be 100% proficient by the year 2014, or care about all subjects equally, or have a home life that's stable, ... and so on.

But let's explore the aspects of Block Scheduling that our Coach didn't touch on, mostly because she seems to feel that it's "obviously" the correct schedule.

To a man, block schedule proponents claim that "more will be done" and that "students will understand the topic better because they'll have more time to work on it and discuss it" and be able to avoid that dreaded "mile-wide and inch deep curriculum."

As someone who has had roughly identical groups -- in the same year -- in 40 minutes classes yearlong and in semester-long block classes, I can tell you that the block classes do less, achieve less, learn less. Other teachers in my district report the same thing.

The differences are subtle but one thing sticks out to me: students in blocks run out of steam. You can't do twice as much all the time. You can't do lesson 6.1 for 30 minutes, stop and stretch, do a little practice, and then do lesson 6.2 immediately and expect that the two sets of homework are possible. Simply doubling the expected work isn't feasible. Sometimes, it works, but not always.


What you often get is Teach, practice, try a little more, and then let them get started on homework. The long period is just too long. If you restructure your course and completely change the way you teach, you can improve things a little but I would maintain that you should be doing that anyway ... and in 50 minute periods.

Other issues? The school's habit of constant interruption for assemblies, sports dismissals, announcements, calling students to the office, and so on. Snow days get in the way, too, as do Fun-time Fridays, and all of the days previous to holidays and days off.

And what of the Special Ed kids, the ADD/OCD/Ed/ODD and the kids who just aren't really thrilled to be there? Why 80 minutes? They have enough trouble settling down for 20; 40 is a stretch but 80 is unfair.

Look at those schedules above. 1.5 hours each of Geometry, Spanish, World History and Science. We don't even do that to college students. It's no wonder they're tired.

And yet, with no significant change to standardized testing or SATs or ACTs or even the state-wide final exams, you get vastly "improved" grades. Interesting, no?

The Daily Schedule, or Why do we do this?

When Amnesty International works to ban a practice in prisons, you might want to rethink doing it in schools.

My school has 1.5 hour blocks separated by 3 minute passing times.  Long ago, I began to tell students that I didn't want to know when or if they were going to the bathroom, just go one at a time and don't dawdle.

"It's none of my business. The pass is right there. Carry it to get yourself past the AP.  I don't need to know why ... TMI, people."

You know what? They go if they need to. But the vast majority doesn't abuse that and class runs just fine.

"I know that sometimes you don't really need to go, but that you need to walk down the stairs, across the building and up the other stairs and then back.  Just realize that when you get back, we will be focused on something and you'll have to pick up the thread quickly. Be ready."

Yes, I admit. That kid in the third row goes every day. He's a wanderer and the AP gets on his case and wants me to restrict his movement, but I refuse. Having him sit and fidget and whine will only distract everyone -- far more than if I just let him go -- and letting him get it out of his system means that he can focus when he returns.

If the situation calls for it, I will ask him directly, "Do you NEED to go? These instructions are important and you'll need to be ready to start this when you get back. Can it wait?"

I don't like it much but it's necessary. 

Admin bitches about tardiness, yet we give them 3 minutes to move two floors and across to a different building. We are told to stand at our doors so we can greet the students but also to monitor the hallway and ensure the kids are moving in an efficient way.

Admin stresses about teaching "bell to bell" -- for 90 goddam minutes -- as if the stresses we put on students don't count. "Teach to the bell" means that kids have to write, think, or be doing something right to the last second, then collect all their stuff, make it down the hall or further, get into the next room and be seated before the tardy bell.

In three minutes?

Why do we torture kids in this fashion?

They have a cup of coffee in the morning to help wake themselves up ... and caffeine is a diuretic. who in their right mind thinks that students will be able to take care of business AND walk to the other building in just three minutes?  Apparently, we do.

At lunch, many will down a 3/4L bottle of Gatorade.

We're all instructed to let the kids drink as much water as they want. We're reminded that 8 cups of water is necessary, so water is the only thing we're all supposed to allow in class -- and many students have a water bottle and the school just installed those nifty water fountain extensions with the reusable bottle filler spout thing.

But you can't go to the bathroom? Does anyone understand how the human body works?

Apparently not.

What brought this up?  Taught by Finland, "For every 45 minutes of classroom instruction in Finland, students are entitled to a 15-minute break. This is guaranteed by law!"

I love this guy. He's an American teacher who moved to Finland and is a teacher there. Well worth reading regularly. What set him off? This Chicago Administrator's note:

In addition to scheduled restroom breaks, students will be given restroom passes to use if they need to use the restroom outside of the scheduled time. Students will be given two restroom passes to use between now and the end of the quarter. They can choose to hold on to them and trade them in for a reward at the end of the quarter. Following these guidelines:

Have students fill in their names as soon as they receive them. Passes are invalid if names are crossed out for another name.

 For the upper grades, students can use one teacher's pass in another classroom, but they still only get the same number of passes per quarter.

 Use a class roster to have student initial next to their name to indicate that they received the passes.

 Have students fill in the "time out" and "time in" and then turn the pass in to the teacher when finished. This will help them practice the [Common Core Standards] of telling time with both digital and analog clocks.

 Promote the benefit of not using the passes by reminding students that rewards will be given for left over passes at the end of the quarter.

The Daily Schedule again

The bastard.

Let's ask some rhetorical questions about the nature of school ... and jump to an amazingly random solution. Actually, I'll let someone else do it.

Shawn Cornally thinks we should get rid of class schedules and let the kids figure it all out. After achieving some success with SBG and assuming that he's got all the answers, Cornally takes the mental leap: maybe the reason kids are cheating, lying, "clamoring for meaningless grades and inflated As" is because the school day is scheduled. Throw in "herd mentality" and "cryptically planned lesson", ask a bunch of rhetorical questions masquerading as reasonable thoughts, and suddenly you've got a blog post.

I'll start with grades. Read more of Cornally's work (ThinkThankThunk -Dealing with the fear of being a boring teacher) and you see that he has a much better argument for SBG as a cure for grade-grubbing and for improving learning. I personally think it's more about how you grade and interact with your students than what form the grades take, but that's not what we're dealing with here.

Here we're discussing whether the daily schedule itself is the cause.

Now, I've been around a long time and I've attended and taught at both public and private, small and large, 8x40minute or 4x90 minute, strict or relaxed (not quite Ode to Billy Jack  but close) and I've dealt with students from all walks of academic life from hippy home-schooled and unschooled to public schools to the private-schooled ultra-rich.

The schedule isn't the problem and it's not what causes angsty students. I've seen too many schools in which this no-schedule proposal has been tried and has badly failed the students in the long run.

"How can we expect them to connect Hemingway, vectors, pottery, cells, and ancient Greece every day? It’s a disjointed nightmare—to which you might say, "deal with it, that’s school." But what I see in my students is that "dealing with it" results in a lot of material crammed for a test and then forgotten."

"They need to see that you can't always get the right answers from the back of a book. How many times were you allowed to mess up a chemistry lab in high school? Most likely you were graded on how well you reproduced a set of instructions the first time you tried it. That’s not how anyone really learns. Students need to know that things go wrong, and they need to be comfortable—dare I say happy—with failing and retrying."

Interesting strawman argument. Fallacious, but interesting. How can he expect me to connect having a schedule with test cramming? What causal link exists here? Further, the balancing of "learning to follow instructions" and "allowing students to mess up" has what possible link other than coincidental with the fact that you have those students for 90 minutes a day?

Cornally then asks a few questions that I'd like to answer:

What if we removed the passive course-to-course drudgery of the school day? What if there was no schedule? What if students were left with a list of coyly worded benchmarks targeted at creating quality humans, and we just waited to see what they could do? What if teachers were seen as mentors for projects designed to help students meet those benchmarks? What if the students initiated these projects and the teachers spent their time recording TED-style talks that would serve as inspiration and help students generate benchmark-related ideas?

What if, indeed. Well, the school would quickly grind to a halt for one thing. What reformers forget is that students, by and large, are not focused on education in the way education "experts" are. What works for a small subset of the population will not work for the greater portion. Additionally, if you let the students choose from too big a list, you'll give them too many choices and they mentally freeze, doing nothing. Students need structure. Not a prison but not a free-for-all either. Where you draw the lines depends on their age/maturity level.

I've made my choice for today.

"Passive course-to-course drudgery" is his interpretation.  As a math teacher, I would love to focus on one thing for an entire day, but few of my students will nor is it optimal as the basis for learning new things.

"A change of work is the best rest."

Students  have other interests, too; math is important and interesting and satisfying (and therefore fun) but not in large doses. If you eliminate the different courses, you and they will quickly run out of energy.

Leaving a list of "coyly worded benchmarks targeted at creating quality humans" would insult any students who thought about it, irritate the hell out of the rest. Students are smart enough to know when they are being patronized. They'll rebel out of irritation.

What if students "initiated these projects and ... teachers were seen as mentors ... serve as inspiration and help students generate ideas"? This pie-in-the-sky mental diarrhea is the worst of the bunch. First, only a few will initiate anything. The rest won't or will tag along hanging to the coat-tails of others at best, or actively sabotage at worst. Students, by definition, are at the stage in their lives where they are making some good choices and many bad ones. It's why they can't drink, smoke, drive without an adult, rent, get married, have sex with a thirty-year-old, join the military.  Some things they can do only with parental permission or supervision. So many forbidden or limited things ... why? Because they are not adults yet, partially because their parents and society doesn't want to let go yet. If a teacher wants to let the students decide everything, then he needs to switch out of public schools and into a private school that specifically allows for it and whose parents specifically asked (and paid) for it .. and even then, there are limits and limitations on what that education really accomplishes.

TED - Inspirational and Truthy
Not Always at the Same Time.

My favorite, though, is "What if the teachers spent their time recording TED-style talks that would serve as inspiration and help students generate benchmark-related ideas?" I love it. First, most teachers are paid to teach. Separating me from the classroom and putting me in a Khan Academy closet to make videos isn't going to make me a TED-quality superstar, isn't going to make the parents, administration or the school board particularly happy, and isn't going to do much for my students. Second, the average teacher is, well, average; hardly inspiring and certainly doesn't have all that much to say beyond the next chapter in the book.  Third, what happens the next year when those videos are already finished? Do I get to sit back and let the previous year's videos do the inspiring while I drink coffee and read omg.com?

Most important, the whole "online video will solve the educational crisis and restore Peace, Love, Justice, and the American Way by inspiring students to do everything we want them to do instead of by forcing them" ignores the obstinate fact that students only tolerate online education when a real class isn't available ... and making a bunch of videos to replace your lectures isn't really all that interesting to your students. If that were the best way to go, YouTube would have already taught them everything they needed by age 13. There are thousands of better videos than mine out there. Thousands are better than Cornally's, too.

Instead, I will go back to my classroom tomorrow, where my students are slated for yet another period of biology. Once a day for 90 days—evidently that’s the prescription for understanding biology. How can we possibly know that’s enough for them to learn biology or any other subject? I’ll be trying a few experiments aimed at giving my students the curriculum and the freedom to generate projects that are asynchronous but productive.

And that, frankly, is what Cornally should do. He should go back to class and do his best. He should avoid giving meaningless, boring assignments to students, refuse to give credit for "organizing her binder in government class", make it possible for them to get inspired by a TED-style video or participate in a blended classroom. By all means, he should use whatever grading system makes the most sense for him, build his course along "authentic" projects (as opposed to what so many of us apparently do ... "fake" or "imitation" projects) and promote project-based learning if that works for him.

How do we know that's enough for them to learn Biology? I've talked about that. (In response to another Cornally post, no less.) The simple answer is that the course filled the time available rather than the other way around. When the science teachers in a neighboring school found they couldn't teach enough of what they thought Physical Science should be, they simply made two courses out of it. At another friend's school, the math department found that they didn't have time for everything they wanted in Pre-Calculus, they separated trig out to a half-credit course.

But as long as we keep the current way classes are scheduled, we will continue claiming that we just don’t have time for learning.

You can claim that.  I certainly won't.

Research in Education - Dan Willingham

I really like the way he thinks.

Starting school at 8am or later ...

Okay, so this is a radical idea?  I've seen it work. It's quite pleasant for all involved.

Why not shift the day until later?

The later you start, the later you finish.  If there are limited sports fields, then the coaches need to be more creative in their planning and field rotations.  It creates some problems in late October and November when the light is fading and when playoffs and such have to begin at 3. After school schedules and later finish times mean lots of announcements that "XXX team is dismissed at 1:30", etc.

Students with after-school jobs lose work time. Buses and such need to change, which is occasionally a serious issue. At some VT schools, several towns cooperate with busing and so the high school schedule needs to mesh with that of the elementary schools. All Vermont high schools are affiliated with a Tech Center and send certain kids to it every day, so you have to mesh your bus schedule with that schedule, too.

So that's the bad news.  The good news is that the kids are awake for first period. The whole school is more relaxed. Tardies and absences go down. First period is no longer the yawning wasteland. The students have a better outlook on the day. It's not a panacea but it is like having a cafeteria that can actually cook decent food -- everyone feels better and the school runs better. (It's amazing what good food can do for a school.)


What's the big deal? Why can't kids just get up? What makes them so damn special?  My response is "Nothing."  I do, however, agree that for whatever the reason, my students don't really get going until 8:30 or so and the start time of 7:30 added to a bus for 60 minutes (yes, 60 minutes to go a total of 15 miles. It's very rural Vermont/New Hampshire. Don't ask.) plus 15 minutes to scrape themselves out of bed and shower (please?) means that they are seriously sleepy for first and second period.

Is it giving up? I don't think so. I think it's a matter of accepting reality and working with it, of accepting that the Calvinistic "up at the crack of dawn" thing isn't what teenagers have EVER done willingly, as a rule.

This should not be done as some magical cure-all for raising test scores, though it will probably affect things somewhat.  Since only 4 high schools in Vermont reached AYP last year, and yet we're still considered one of the best states in the country for education,  many places are willing to try anything.


What are the changes? Brattleboro Union High School will push its start time back an hour this fall, to 8:45 am.  The middle and high schools will now let out at 3:20 in the afternoon, pushing athletics back an hour.

Typical start times range from 7:20 a.m at Fall Mountain to 7:55 a.m. at Hinsdale. Bennington started at 7:10 for a couple of years but changed that. The local Catholic schools are typically 8a.m. starts and one of the four schools in Vermont that met AYP last year starts at 8:20 a.m. (It's a coincidence. Come on, people.)

I eagerly await the results.

Here's a pertinent site: schoolstarttime.org

Why Two Years of Algebra? Why ten months?

Shawn Cornally asks in this post, "Who decided that it takes an equal amount of time to teach every subject?"

No one decided.

What happened was that the time involved was "decided" upon by each school on its own and each one gradually came to the same conclusions: The summer months were too damned hot in NYC and all points south of Boston - since that was where the decision-makers were, that was the decision. Time off for major holidays and the occasional week or two here and there - Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter - and the rest is school.

Sorry to all you "It's all based on the agrarian calender" believers - it's obvious you were never on a farm. The summer months are busy (the definition of farmer is 'a busy man') but nowhere near as busy as other times of the year.  Planting and harvest are kinda important, and that's May and October. The winter months have their own flow - it's not like farmers are sedentary during all but the 10 weeks of summer break!

The class time has varied from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours, yet everyone who thinks about it usually comes to the same conclusion: "If I have to choose, it's 50 minutes, all year. That seems the best compromise for all the students." Since the classes are all mixed up, you have to find a compromise.

Once the times were decided, the courses expanded or split to fit the available hours. If a school tried a new initiative, the courses all shifted to fit. Books were written to fit the prevailing choice with a couple extra chapters of overlap so they could sell them to more people. Teachers who finished something early would add a topic or expand a earlier one. Teachers who went over made some resolution to move faster. Look at the way AP is 1 month shorter than the rest of the school yet somehow those teachers make 2x the work fit.

Then the time became flexible and the courses changed again, slightly. A chapter was added to the math class, another Shakespeare play was included.  It was decided that 1 year was too little for all the Great Ideas of Algebra, so let's do 2, etc.

When block scheduling became all the rage, the total hours were kept constant and the material shifted to fit the new format. If the course syllabus changed radically, the new would always be compared to the old because the old needed to be fundamentally similarity to the new.

Shift, change and adapt --- Evolution, baby.

Additionally, the expectations of a particular course become centered around the transcript, i.e, does a grade of "A" in a course labeled "CP Physics" taught by a guy named Cornally in the Midwest using SBG mean what I think it means and include what I think it should include?  Do I schedule this kid for a remedial physics class before allowing him to matriculate or do I throw him right in and let him become a Physics major at my Uni?  Do I hire him based on this report or not?

Given all that, it's surprisingly consistent from student to student. Match up the "A" students in CP Physics from 80 different schools and they'll be amazingly similar and their abilities and knowledge pretty damned predictable.

No Bells - part one

David Wees feels that School Bells Interfere With Learning. I beg to differ.

"I hate being interrupted ..." and "The clock itself isn't evil, but the way we use it in schools has serious ramifications on how our students learn."

I hate being interrupted, too, but this has little to do with the bells and a lot to do with the location of the clock and the habits of the teacher. No matter how long the class is, whether you have a 4x4 block system or 7x50min or 8x40min, 1hr per day, or 2hrs per day, each class needs to end sometime. If the teacher can see the clock, it shouldn't take him by surprise.

Mrs. Curmudgeon's school is considering the switch back to bells every period. For years they had no bells between classes, just at the beginning and end of the day. There were the problems you might expect: groups of kids milling in the hall chatting, kids who show up 10 minutes late because the other teacher didn't notice the time or just wanted to keep going. The bathroom is a favorite excuse.

Students aren't going through the day in lockstep with all of their classmates and we must keep to a schedule so that everyone's time and preparation can be utilized most effectively. One freshman may take Honors Algebra2, Spanish 3 and H.English but the other takes CP English, CPAlgebra1 and Spanish1. The only course they have in common might be a Freshman History. You really can't expect every other teacher to make adjustments to fit that teacher's teaching whim of the day.

"I am always getting interrupted by the bell" and "It just never seems long enough" are not reasons to get rid of bells. "Kids are always late" is not one either. I've taught classes that were 40, 45, 50, 60, 80 and 90 minutes long; seminars and workshops lasting from 15 minutes to 6 hours. They always have definite schedules.

The only way to allow for extended time is to have large time gaps between classes, a la college scheduling. Even in this scenario, few classes are ever extended. You have an hour, so you plan for an hour. Extensions are done during "office hours" or during that time after class when the student catches the teacher and asks a question.

It wouldn't be a proper 21st century school reform piece if it didn't mention the dreaded "factory-model" analogy and dream wistfully about flexibility and "learning opportunities," so here goes:

Clocks are part of the systems world of a school but they have come to rule our life world. We have let ourselves become subject to fixed schedules, daily routine, and the drudgery of a factory-like system. I'm not saying that we can do without the clocks, but maybe we need to find ways for our system to be more flexible, to allow the learning to extend when necessary, and even send off kids early for another opportunity to learn, when their lesson with us is done.

So my group of 15 can't all begin at once because you are keeping 12 of them for a necessary extended learning opportunity? "Necessary" to whom? Will you send them to me when I have my AP calculus kids in their own "extended learning opportunity"?

If any student can be late at any time by merely invoking the "I didn't know what time it was", then what kind of message are we sending about responsibility? When your kids can deliberately steer you into a digression so they can be "legitimately" late to their next class, what societal good are we accomplishing? If promptness no longer matters, then few students will ever be prompt and the school will deteriorate.  You'll accomplish less than you do now and eventually go back.

Maybe we could do the 21st century skills, uber-techno-geek thing and program every student's iPhone, iPad, netbook ... to sound an alarm to signal the end of periods.

New Policies that will work SO well ...

It's goofy season again in our district, the time when rules are made to be broken, then changed. Last week the announcement was made that "all students who live in (one of our sending towns) would be dismissed from last period five minutes early to ride the bus." No one else.

That'll work.

Schedules from Around and About

Mrs. H asked and we happened to have this information available and here is much easier to format than the silly little comment window. Some information is not available and few schedules include a lunch because all of the schools have an extra long period during which a 20-minute to 30-minute lunch is extracted. Simplicity dictated we not mention lunch. If this is helpful to anyone, have at it.

This is mostly boring and is hidden below the jump:

Fun with the Daily Schedule

The school wants to make a change. They had a set schedule years ago. They tried a rotating schedule and now want to change back. The students disagree and sign petitions and write eloquent letters. So far, so good.

Then you read some of the reasons the students put forth and you wonder which world the kids are really inhabiting. Scratch that. They're still in "It's not my fault"-ville with a few residing in Dillusiontown. Much of the argument boils down to "Humor me. I can't get out of bed so you need to change."

The whole purpose of a public high school is to provide an education to as many students as it can, in as efficient a way as it can. The students actually have to be on time in order for this to work - we need a schedule so everyone is coordinated.

Here are some of their complaints:

(1) Students can't be on time for first period. Whose fault is that? "A lot more will bunk class if they're late." So? If you want to be an idiot, get lost.
"Pity the teenager who routinely arrives at school 10 minutes late. With a rotating schedule, which is what Classical has now, that student doesn’t have to worry about being late for the same subject day after day." So you screw with every class instead? I'd rather such students arranged for a study hall first period and showed up 40 minutes late than to have them miss 25% of every first period, which would actually be more like missing the whole thing. Why? Any kid who is consistently late will also not be likely to be prepared for class and will destroy much of the class's attention, not to mention the teacher's. Look at Willingham's distraction test - a distraction negatively affects the class's memory of events and ideas FROM BOTH BEFORE AND AFTER the distraction. Really, the kids who can't get to school on time are simply making excuses. If they can be consistently 10-15 minutes late, change their clocks and they'll be consistently on-time.

(2) Students will fall asleep in first period - again, whose fault is that? What do these matriculating seniors say about college where freshmen are always assigned to the 8am classes? What about the other end of the day? If you start late, you'll have to end late. No one wants to have classes go until 4pm.
"What about a teenager’s circadian rhythm? The new schedule, Siegmund says, ignores research that shows that teenagers are not fully awake until an hour after they wake up." SO wake them up earlier. If we cater to their every whim, we'll be starting school at 1pm and ending it at 1:15pm, and holding it only on Tuesday and Wednesday.

(3) Students want to talk with their friends during lunch, but they can't because of the schedule. Why is this so important? Frankly, the students should be split from their friends - school is the place to make new friends and try new things - as soon as school's out, they can compare notes and tell stories with their "boys." School is NOT a place where student "learn social skills" by only talking to the same five people all day.

(4) "Nobody wants leftovers in C lunch every day." You got me there. The lunch program always deteriorates as the day progresses. So fix the lunch program. This is a problem in every school who has hired out to Aramark or some other service. The food is definitely worse in the last lunch.

(5) Students don't want every day to be the same. Other than spoiling them, why does this matter? They've had a set schedule for the first eight years of their educational career, and they'll have a set schedule for the next four years, and they'll have a set schedule for their work life. Even if they work from home, their employer won't tolerate constantly changing times. Why should this era be any different? In what way are students psychologically unable to handle a set schedule? It's my experience that the students crave consistency.

ON THE OTHER HAND

Having said that, I do like rotation. It's not necessary, but I like it. I don't get the same class last period. There is a different group for the post-lunch doldrums. I understand that the rotating schedule interferes with too much other stuff and I'm not surprised that a public school wants to change back to a set schedule.

Some of the very real problems that must be overcome:

(1) Out of school schedules
- Seniors can't take college classes because they can't align their free time with the college.
- Eighth graders can't come up to the high school for geometry because the schedules don't match.
- Interns and work-study students can't get a set time to leave the building for their jobs.


(2) Part-timers and One-shot Deals
- The school can't bring in part-time teachers (the super-duper calculus teacher from the college can come in first period only and the half-time English teacher can't set her schedule and get a second part-time job.)
- Any online conference or schooling that is at a set time each day, can't be done.
- Speakers and such - getting it right is a miracle. Postponements are especially hard.
- Appointments can't be scheduled easily with free periods. People are forever asking "third period of the day or 3rd period?"


(3) Silly but important
- Seniors don't get the late arrival privilege that comes with a free first period.
- Students forget which day it is. Procrastinators forget they didn't have a free period before math class. Kids are always going to the wrong class.
- Teachers forget which day it is. "Damn, I need to make copies during the free period I don't have in time."
- Anything that requires more than one day is done at different times.
- Sports: The classes missed are always different. This messes with the students in all of their classes instead of just one. The coaches are usually helpful but ...
- Field Trip excused absences are a real PITA. "Please excuse Johnny, Sue and Billy from last period on Thursday." Which class is that? Are they in that class? What will they miss?
- What day is today?

It's a terrific pain if the students are doing anything outside of the building while in a completely contained environment, it's great. It boils down to the reason that the schedule is made in the first place - to get students and teachers together in an efficient way.

One possible solution is to have the two parts of the day treated separately, which I have seen done. The afternoon three classes rotate. If anyone had outside commitments, they invariably had the three afternoon periods free and could leave regardless of the rotation.


Here's the original article:

---

Classical students petition against fixed-schedule plan
By Linda Borg / Providence (RI) Journal Staff Writer
July 5, 2009

PROVIDENCE — Students will snooze through first period. They won’t be able to socialize with different groups of friends during lunch. Grades will surely suffer because students will be so bored.

Classical High School students are in a snit over the School Department’s plan to adopt a fixed class schedule in all its high schools this fall, a plan that students say will lead to academic ruin.

In the waning days of school, Madeleine Siegmund, a junior, gathered 245 signatures on a petition that implores school officials to abandon plans to impose a fixed six-period day. In her eloquent, two-page letter, Siegmund calls her missive “a protest to every single day being on the same time.”

“In the teenage mind,” she writes, “interest leads to motivation. Too much mind-numbing repetition lowers interest and drive. … The great majority of students regard it as near torture to have every class at the same time, every day, every week, every month, all year.”

Madeleine’s mother, Carmel McGill, who is also president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Organization, couldn’t agree more and has appealed to school administrators for relief.

“Having a rotating schedule allows our students to have a breather every day,” said Laura Gallagher, who will be a junior this fall. “It makes every day less boring, monotone and unappealing. From a social perspective, it’s better to have rotation so that lunches will be different. Nobody wants leftovers in C lunch every day.”

But school officials say that in a district with 23,300 students and 13 high schools, consistency is a must, especially since students change schools frequently. A fixed six-period day will allow department heads to have common planning time and make it easier for students to set up internships and enroll in college courses, according to Nkoli Onye, executive director of high schools.

“The class schedule, in and of itself, doesn’t do anything,” Onye said. “It’s about what we do with the schedule.”

But some Classical students worry that a fixed schedule will wreak havoc with their first-period class. Pity the teenager who routinely arrives at school 10 minutes late. With a rotating schedule, which is what Classical has now, that student doesn’t have to worry about being late for the same subject day after day.

“The good thing about this school was the schedule,” says Stephanie Acebebo, a senior. “Every day, it was something different. A lot more kids will bunk class, especially if they come in late.”

Siegmund says that Rhode Island Public Transit Authority buses, which most high school students in Providence rely on for transportation, are not always reliable. Sometimes, she says, they are late; sometimes, they are early and sometimes, the RIPTA bus is full and blasts right past the waiting student.

What about a teenager’s circadian rhythm? The new schedule, Siegmund says, ignores research that shows that teenagers are not fully awake until an hour after they wake up. Again, this means that the first period of the day suffers.

“If there is the same class first period every morning and the student is either exhausted or late,” Siegmund says, “he or she will most likely fail that class because of the limited ability to participate fully. CUTTING CLASSES WILL BECOME AN EPIDEMIC.”