Block scheduling, part 1

Hello everyone,

A new teacher was talking to me this morning about block scheduling. He wanted to get back to the discussion about it. He says that, since he is new to the profession and cannot predict the pitfalls, it would be good for us to have a full discussion of the good and bad of the proposals. Soon after I spoke to him, I received the following email from one of the assistant principals:

Now that we're talking about assessments to confirm if the students are LEARNING it is appropriate to say, being given the list of the different types of assessments, that the proposed block schedule by the principal will allow for the in-depth, continuous assessments needed. It will give our students the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations that include group discussions, presentations and feedback. Wow! What a great opportunity for our school and for our new teachers to implement.

I suppose these two encounters provide a good enough transition from yesterday's discussion of assessment to a possible dialogue about block scheduling.

I have no personal experience with block scheduling outside a few parallel experiences. I have often worked the two-hour blocks that constitute an intersession class, and I have taught a few sessions of the three-and-a-half hour blocks of Saturday school. Before I came into the public school system, I taught in a private language school where students immersed themselves into various languages for all their waking hours, and teachers taught in two-hour blocks.

A performing arts teacher points out that two-hour blocks are very useful for teaching performance classes because they allow for full rehearsal periods.

It occurs to me that the blocks would be very good for my old film classes because they would allow for a film to be viewed in one sitting. (Discussion could throw the viewing schedule off, however--something that might be fixed by the current proposal of four days of block, one day of regular schedule.)

Teaching in a two-hour block requires a little adaptation. If you are accustomed to doing exactly the same thing throughout the entire period, you'd have to change because that is deadly dull for two hours. (You may have been able to endure it in college, but your high school students need more variety.) Breaking the class up into blocks of 15-30 minute activities is useful in classes that don't need two hours of rehearsal time or screening time. It's not a hard adaptation, however.

Potty breaks are a problem. I personally needed the break time that was built into the old intersession schedule. My body ain't what it used to be.

When I was in high school in the '70s, the school across town was more progressive and did a block schedule. It was a disaster for them. There were high levels of truancy, loads of confusion, and lots of disgruntled teachers and frustrated students. They have since returned to traditional scheduling.

Current literature on block scheduling points out that, in the '70s it was done wrong. There was too much flexibility, which was confusing (it was called, I think, "flex"); students were left on their own too much, which need not happen; it was easy to get on and off campus, which isn't the case here (I know it's not impossible, but it takes a little ingenuity for students to get in and out).

That's what I know. I add that to the views of the arts teacher, Mr. Del Cueto, and the assistant principal, and throw it into the mix.

Jeff Combe