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jenettIn which I talk about schedules. I'm going to leave specific schedules for faculty/staff/etc. for another post, because it also gets into contracts.
Day and week in the life:
School schedules are complicated: everyone's got their own ideas about what's important. They're also one of the things that administrators sometimes fix on as a way to put their 'stamp' on a school. Changing them generally involves huge amounts of wrangling.
There are three pieces of scheduling: daily, weekly, and the school year schedule. As you might guess, there are way too many permutations to talk about all of them, so I'm going to talk about what we do, and a couple of other common options. I'll note that our schedule is so complicated that I've been here for 10 years (and it hasn't changed) and I *still* can't tell without looking when most of the class start and end times are. (I know the anchor points, and when to go down to lunch to avoid the ravening hordes, but that's about it.)
The basic issues are:
- How do you get sufficient class meetings to allow progress
- How do you handle extra-long class times for labs or other longer projects
- And ideally, how do you shift things so that no one class always meets first thing in the morning (sleepy students) or last thing in the day (often harder to keep attention, especially on Fridays or before vacation)
- How to manage students who are dismissed early for athletic competitions not always missing the same class. (Our sports sometimes excuse people at 2:30 or 2:15 if they have a long drive to a competition.)
Class length:
Mondays and Fridays: all classes meet for 45 minutes
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: each class meets 2 times over those 3 days for 65 minutes
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: begin at 7:50am
Wednesday, Friday: begin at 8:20 am
All days: end at 3pm
Number of classes
Students generally take 6 classes. We try to discourage 7, and 5 is generally not common, except for some seniors. This leaves them with one free period most days. Freshmen and first-semester sophomores have study hall. Everyone else has a free period and can be anywhere in the school. (Seniors can leave campus if they sign out.)
Other weekly events:
Monday: time to work individually with teachers
Tuesday, Thursday: Assembly time (senior speeches, announcements, etc.) Every senior is required to give a 5 minute speech to the assembled school body: it's linked with the required Psychology for Communication class.
Wednesday: Extended time with homerooms or grade meeting in the morning, plus activity time (club meetings, time working with individual teachers, etc.) or an outside speaker (about once a month) in the afternoon.
The time before 8:20 on Wed/Fri is used for faculty meetings, club meetings, etc.
Beyond that, we have 7 class periods (1, 2, 3...) On Monday, they meet in numerical order. After that, it gets complicated. For example, today, a Tuesday, is:
7:50 : homeroom
8-9:05 : period 2
9:10 to 9:45 : Assembly (3 speeches)
9:50-10:55 : Period 4
11-12:40 : Period 3 and Lunch (65 minutes of class, 35 minutes total for lunch + time to get to class)
12:45 - 1:50 : Period 7
1:55 - 3pm : Period 6
Migratory days
Because of this schedule, there are complications every time we miss a day of school for some reason - for example, if we miss a Tuesday, some classes will have more class meetings than others. This means that we sometimes have days where the rest of the world (or at least the state) thinks it's Tuesday, and we think it's some other day, to make the class counts over the course of the semester/year work out fairly. These are confusing.
Other scheduling complications
Our school has a senior program which begins in the second week of May. Some seniors continue to come to one or two classes, but many are not at school at all - some travelling, some working on other projects. (There's a thorough application process, and they have to demonstrate educational stuff being in there somewhere, as well as do a presentation on it when they come back.)
Semester schedules
The most recent round of schedule wrangling here has been around when exams happen in the middle of the year. You see, if you end the semester in December (before everyone goes on winter break), you have an uneven semester. (Or in our case, it's even for the seniors, but uneven for everyone else.)
But if you put exams by the semester break, then you have exams hanging over everyone's heads over break. Which is also not so good. (Harvard, one of the last university holdouts on this one, has finally changed, even.)
We also have the complication that we have some teachers who would like an extended period of time (longer than a normal class) but who don't want to give an exam or other 'major' assessment in the same way (we define 'major assessment' as '20% of your final grade or more'. An example is our Model UN class, where they do a model UN conference, but their prep materials count more than the actual conference. The trick is, however, that it's hard on kids to be focused on prepping both an exam and a major project for the same day.
The problem is that not every class does well with long segments - math classes, for example, can't make really good use of them. And also that you don't want a class giving *both* an exam and a major project, because that's a lot of pressure on kids in terms of preparation time.
So, what we did this year was to have 3 days of exams right before we went on break, and then 3 days of projects in the 3rd week of January (Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so no school, and Friday was given over to grade activity day.) While that sort of worked out, it's still clunky and annoying.
My bet is that this coming year, we either go to "Everything before winter break, and semester length classes can work something out" or that we go back to "Week of long segments, do what you want with yours." in January.
Day and week in the life:
School schedules are complicated: everyone's got their own ideas about what's important. They're also one of the things that administrators sometimes fix on as a way to put their 'stamp' on a school. Changing them generally involves huge amounts of wrangling.
There are three pieces of scheduling: daily, weekly, and the school year schedule. As you might guess, there are way too many permutations to talk about all of them, so I'm going to talk about what we do, and a couple of other common options. I'll note that our schedule is so complicated that I've been here for 10 years (and it hasn't changed) and I *still* can't tell without looking when most of the class start and end times are. (I know the anchor points, and when to go down to lunch to avoid the ravening hordes, but that's about it.)
The basic issues are:
- How do you get sufficient class meetings to allow progress
- How do you handle extra-long class times for labs or other longer projects
- And ideally, how do you shift things so that no one class always meets first thing in the morning (sleepy students) or last thing in the day (often harder to keep attention, especially on Fridays or before vacation)
- How to manage students who are dismissed early for athletic competitions not always missing the same class. (Our sports sometimes excuse people at 2:30 or 2:15 if they have a long drive to a competition.)
Class length:
Mondays and Fridays: all classes meet for 45 minutes
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: each class meets 2 times over those 3 days for 65 minutes
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: begin at 7:50am
Wednesday, Friday: begin at 8:20 am
All days: end at 3pm
Number of classes
Students generally take 6 classes. We try to discourage 7, and 5 is generally not common, except for some seniors. This leaves them with one free period most days. Freshmen and first-semester sophomores have study hall. Everyone else has a free period and can be anywhere in the school. (Seniors can leave campus if they sign out.)
Other weekly events:
Monday: time to work individually with teachers
Tuesday, Thursday: Assembly time (senior speeches, announcements, etc.) Every senior is required to give a 5 minute speech to the assembled school body: it's linked with the required Psychology for Communication class.
Wednesday: Extended time with homerooms or grade meeting in the morning, plus activity time (club meetings, time working with individual teachers, etc.) or an outside speaker (about once a month) in the afternoon.
The time before 8:20 on Wed/Fri is used for faculty meetings, club meetings, etc.
Beyond that, we have 7 class periods (1, 2, 3...) On Monday, they meet in numerical order. After that, it gets complicated. For example, today, a Tuesday, is:
7:50 : homeroom
8-9:05 : period 2
9:10 to 9:45 : Assembly (3 speeches)
9:50-10:55 : Period 4
11-12:40 : Period 3 and Lunch (65 minutes of class, 35 minutes total for lunch + time to get to class)
12:45 - 1:50 : Period 7
1:55 - 3pm : Period 6
Migratory days
Because of this schedule, there are complications every time we miss a day of school for some reason - for example, if we miss a Tuesday, some classes will have more class meetings than others. This means that we sometimes have days where the rest of the world (or at least the state) thinks it's Tuesday, and we think it's some other day, to make the class counts over the course of the semester/year work out fairly. These are confusing.
Other scheduling complications
Our school has a senior program which begins in the second week of May. Some seniors continue to come to one or two classes, but many are not at school at all - some travelling, some working on other projects. (There's a thorough application process, and they have to demonstrate educational stuff being in there somewhere, as well as do a presentation on it when they come back.)
Semester schedules
The most recent round of schedule wrangling here has been around when exams happen in the middle of the year. You see, if you end the semester in December (before everyone goes on winter break), you have an uneven semester. (Or in our case, it's even for the seniors, but uneven for everyone else.)
But if you put exams by the semester break, then you have exams hanging over everyone's heads over break. Which is also not so good. (Harvard, one of the last university holdouts on this one, has finally changed, even.)
We also have the complication that we have some teachers who would like an extended period of time (longer than a normal class) but who don't want to give an exam or other 'major' assessment in the same way (we define 'major assessment' as '20% of your final grade or more'. An example is our Model UN class, where they do a model UN conference, but their prep materials count more than the actual conference. The trick is, however, that it's hard on kids to be focused on prepping both an exam and a major project for the same day.
The problem is that not every class does well with long segments - math classes, for example, can't make really good use of them. And also that you don't want a class giving *both* an exam and a major project, because that's a lot of pressure on kids in terms of preparation time.
So, what we did this year was to have 3 days of exams right before we went on break, and then 3 days of projects in the 3rd week of January (Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so no school, and Friday was given over to grade activity day.) While that sort of worked out, it's still clunky and annoying.
My bet is that this coming year, we either go to "Everything before winter break, and semester length classes can work something out" or that we go back to "Week of long segments, do what you want with yours." in January.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 05:35 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing!
Does the Monday individual time happen during a school period, after school, or some other time?
The senior speeches sound like a good idea. Also the senior programs in May, when they're basically useless anyway and want to move on. (Except doesn't that overlap with AP Exams?)
I thought I remembered my friend in grad school at Harvard cramming for exams over winter break, pretty recently. When did they change it? Did they change it for everyone, or just the undergrads?
The problem is that not every class does well with long segments - math classes, for example, can't make really good use of them.
You understand this, thank you! WHY DOES NOBODY ELSE UNDERSTAND THIS?
So, what we did this year was to have 3 days of exams right before we went on break, and then 3 days of projects in the 3rd week of January
This seems reasonable, although I'd never encountered formally scheduled project time before.
What grades is your school, again?
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 07:59 pm (UTC)Monday time: it's a separate block in the schedule, but no classes meet, so everyone has it free.
Senior speeches are surprisingly excellent - it's a longstanding school tradition, and it also means that there's a purpose for assembly (which a lot of non-religious schools sort of struggle with.)
Senior program ... yeah, you basically give up on the seniors buckling down in class. You're right that there's some overlap in APs: in those cases, they basically are done as of the AP. (Which is usually that first week of the three, unless there's something really odd in the schedule.) So even if they're travelling, they still have two weeks to go somewhere.
Re: Harvard: they changed it *really* recently:
Math classes: I enjoy sitting with math teachers, and listening to them rant about this one, mostly. But really, it makes perfect sense. (There's also only so much you can do in an English or language class, too, unless you're doing presentations.)
Re: the project time: the idea was to split out major projects from exams. We're all pretty much decided that it's not as useful as it might be. It has, nevertheless, consumed at least half of the Upper School administrative committee meetings this year.
And the school is PK-12, but I'm at the upper school, which is 9-12. (Our lower grades work on basically the same calendar, but without the exams stuff in the same way, and the middle school block system is also quite different.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-16 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-07 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 01:42 am (UTC)I wondered what your school's day was like from the previous post, where you said the students have basically three full months off over the summer.
Our school day was 8.40am to 4pm, but we had about an hour and a half for lunch, so there was time to run interhouse sports matches and clubs. (Will come back to this later when I have time to remember exactly what the schedule was). So I suppose we had about an hour less of school each day. However, we had a much longer school year - from the first week in September to the first week in July. Even then, the summer holiday was insanely long, and boring if my mum was too busy to take me to the library. I don't know how your students ever come back to school remembering anything!
Also, I find it strange when schools have assembly at any time other than first thing in the morning. It makes some sense to have it at the end of the school day, but it seems extremely weird to me for it to be anywhere other than first or last thing. We had registration (which I think is the same as your homeroom) for 10 minutes, then assembly or Chapel for 25 minutes every day, except for the day which was House meeting. (The order of which days had which things changed as I progressed through the school, and I can't reliably say which was which now).
Did you already mention how big the school is in terms of student numbers, and how this compares to state-funded schools in your area?
no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 01:42 pm (UTC)As far as assembly: I think part of it is that when students can be off-campus, having assembly first block means that students would have to come in, then have a block free, etc. Moving it to the second thing in the day gives a little more flexibility.
As far as size: we're about 530 in the Upper School this year. Public schools in Minneapolis tend to be in the 1200-2000 student range, but they often have smaller sub-programs (International Baccalaureate, vocational training, business skills, science and math, etc.)