Scheduling for student classes, & faculty meeting time

[Laurie Bartels]

All the research I have read suggests that starting sometime in middle school there should be longer blocks (and thus fewer blocks on any given day) of time for student classes and activities. Students need time to settle and focus, engage, and reflect.

I am curious to hear about interesting scheduling ideas, and systems that are in place at other schools. Surely there must be alternative scheduling options to the standard 45 min, 8 periods/day routine.

It is not just students who benefit from meeting times that address their needs; so do faculty. Faculty need time to meet for a variety of reasons, but often in-school during-the-day time is difficult to find. What systems do other schools have in place to foster various group meetings?

[Bill Ivey]

We have to build our middle school schedule around the upper school schedule, but we managed to get double-length blocks (80-100, usually 90) minutes 4x/week for our Humanities and Math/Science classes, dubbing the periods"AB" and "CD" to show the vague connections they have to the upper school schedule. This also allowed us to fit in thrice-weekly advisories (the upper school advisories meet once every three weeks). The other four middle school periods match the upper school - 4x/week, 40, 45, 45, and 65 minutes.

The last 25 minutes of the day on Tuesday and Friday, in both the middle and upper school, is given over to club meetings. The default for middle schoolers who don't participate in clubs (pretty much all of them this year) is "MOCA," our student government, which involves the entire middle school. Upper school class meetings happen Friday mornings, for 20 minutes, smack dab in the middle of the middle school "CD" block.

The twice-weekly middle school team meetings are scheduled opposite middle school study hall on Tuesdays and Fridays. Department meetings happen during whatever free period teachers have in common, or over lunch. There is a short faculty meeting every Monday (which two middle school teachers can never attend because we are in class), and a longer faculty meeting one Tuesday evening per month.

All this somehow happens between 8:00 and 3:30 (well, the middle school fudges it by having a 7:55 homeroom), 8:00 and 12:00 on Wednesdays.

[Peter Gow]

Our upper school is a poster child for strange block schedules, with a 3-term calendar in which kids take fewer classes (4-5 per term) for longer chunks of time (3 60-minute classes and 1 130-minute class per week). Kids have fewer transitions and the long periods do in fact enable some real in-depth activities and discussions.

We've used this schedule since 1997, and even when we went through a major review a couple of years ago we couldn't figure out how to improve on it without losing some of the really good things. I've got all kinds of materials on schedule development and change (the move from 10 40s a day to this schedule was pretty thoughtfully done over a couple of years, but it was still traumatic.

In concept our schedule is like one we found being used at the Urban School in San Francisco, but we tweaked this pretty dramatically to accommodate our important arts program and a few other necessities. When I'm back on my own computer I'll upload some materials here, and I'm happy to talk about schedules and (more importantly) schedule change.

I'm actually curious to know whether any schools are abandoning established "block" models to go go back to more traditional schedules. Block schedules were getting a very bad rap a few years back, but I think that was largely about sudden and awful implementation. I notice a lot of discussion about rotating schedules these days, which is one way to ease some of the problems with blocks. (We've got a 7-day rotator in our middle school that the kids handle well but adults have trouble with.)

[Laurie Bartels]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply. Am a bit envious of the schedule in place at your school, both because the research I've read supports such a schedule, and because it's the type of schedule in which I would best function (as a learner and a teacher).

My school has a 6-day rotation and it definitely seems to have benefits, including what may make readers smile – that of making Monday much better than "oh, it's Monday again".

You mention having materials on schedule development and change, and I would love to take you up on your offer to post information about schedule change.

Cheers, Laurie

[Peter Gow]

I didn't exactly address the meeting time issue. For nearly 15 years now we've started classes at 9 on Tuesday mornings (instead of 8 the rest of the week). This gives us a full hour each week for full-faculty (or division, or department, or committees, or whatever) meetings--no one coaching, no one proctoring a study hall, everyone available. In addition, we have upper school grade-team meetings on Wednesdays (shortened class day because of early release for sports) and the Middle School meets after school every Monday.

I'm going to upload a fairly current schedule grid and a one-sheet explanation of our schedule. I've got more goodies on scheduling that I'll burrow around after soon

[Dorothy Bialke]

This is our second year with a block schedule for our middle school students in grades five through eight. This schedule allows for two 80 minute blocks and one 40 minute block for each core class. We have found this to benefit the young adolescent as they can have a quick review, introduction of the new topic, time for a discussion or activity followed up by a wrap up. Both the students and teachers are pleased with the change.

[Laurie Bartels]

Thanks, Dorothy, for your feedback. This schedule sounds like it is tuned to the cycles of how the kids process information, at least according to what I've read. No wonder that students and teachers are pleased :-) Was it tough to sell the faculty on the new schedule? Was there anything special your administrators did that helped to sell the new schedule?
Cheers, Laurie

[Dorothy Bialke]

When I started a similar program and schedule at my previous school I look to the National Middle School Association for ideas of how to meet the needs of the young adolescent. The organization is a wonderful resource for designing a program to meet their unique needs. Prior to implementation at both of the schools I encouraged my staff to visit schools that use the block schedule so they could see it in action. I was fortunate that I had a staff member at each school that had experienced the block schedule during their student teaching.

[P. Gilmore]

We have a really great schedule and the best part is that it reflects what we value in our school. We use a six day rotation with each class meeting five times. Each class has two 60 min. blocks and the rest are 45. There are six academic periods in a day. We use 5 min passing times.

The benefits as tied to our values:

Varying class times: Because our creative teachers would be bored with repetition.
60 Min periods: for labs, movies, visitors, extended discussions, etc.
Drop day: So teachers and students get a break from each class once per cycle
35 Min Assembly period each day: Because we have a strong sense of community and use lots of presenters etc.
Central Music Block of 50 min: Because the music teachers need access to ALL students. This gives us a choir of 135 kids, an orchestra of 45 kids and a band of 50 kids.
Common planning times: 40 min. for each department each cycle.
Standard course loads: nobody teaches more than 4 times each day and usually less

It really works great!