The Seven Period Day

Over 30 years as a teacher in several schools I have had to deal with many different schedules. Most schedules seemed to insist that it was better for the students. If each said it was better then there has to be something wrong with that view or we would not change. In reality most of the changes were to solve some administrative problem. I have seen many teachers that failed 30 to 60 percent of their classes. While it may be true that you could have some classes where this could actually happen it is much more likely that there is also something wrong with the instruction. It would be reasonable to possibly expect a bell curve where a small number perhaps 2-4 might deserve to fail and a small number might deserve an "A". This does not mean that a teacher should aim for a bell curve. Block scheduling was initiated in part to give failing students in a class a second opportunity to take that class within the same year perhaps or certainly within a couple of years. There is an underlying concept that if a student failed a class that the student must have learned something while in the class and would do better the next time and if that "next time" was in the same year, it might be better. It was also thought better to have that student with a different teacher the second time. This would allow the teacher and student to start on a new level playing field.

Block scheduling does work for some teachers and students. It does not work for all students and teachers. Changing courses to two sections of 1/2 year would accomplish the same ability to give students a second chance, but it creates a scheduling meltdown. Some terms you could end up needing to teach A and B parts of a course to accommodate the needs. There are space limitations, union contract agreements, student needs and many other factors that can affect how a school functions.

In general it is often best to keep a very specific and constant schedule. We not only had block schedules, but we changed the schedule for "early dismissal" days, for club days, for special presentations, for assemblies, for testing, for bomb threats, fire drills, tornado drills, parent conference days or nights, holidays and many other situations. There were weeks when we did not follow the same schedule any two days in a row. The secretary had to print out different versions of schedules so often even she made mistakes.

The concept of "Keep It Simple" is vital. At the most basic level it adds safety and security to the process. There were days when lunch time was so drastically changed the students were justified in their complaints. Personally I preferred the shorter periods (6-7 period day) because I felt that I was the type of person that could be extremely dynamic for 30-45 minutes, but lost steam after that amount of time. I would seem to regain that ability for each new class and I felt I often got better after the first two classes and then started to slow down a bit toward the end of the day. The short break between classes seemed to help.

No scheduling system has a chance to work if you change that schedule so often. The teacher that does "labs" does find the longer periods better when doing labs, but may not find it so great when not doing labs. Recently my school district went to the seven period day. It was felt that this made better use of the teachers and could still help keep the number of students in each class somewhat lower. This is the first year of a return to shorter period, wonder what will happen a few years from now.