Class Time in Perspective

Hello everyone,

It is important to keep class time in perspective in a year-round school like Garfield.

Traditional school year: 180 days (others)

Concept 6 school year: 163 days (us)

One minute per day or five minutes once a week of lost instruction time adds up to 2 ½ days of lost instruction time each year. You lose more than one week of instruction for every two minutes of lost class time.

Keep this in mind when students beg for you to “kick back” or give them free time. Since they are already 17 days a year (almost 3 ½ weeks of instruction) behind traditional school years, they really need every minute they can get.

Some solutions

Work to make class time as efficient as possible.

Begin with the expectation that, in your class at least, students will work. (You can use the three-day weekend as an excuse to make changes if necessary.)

Try to have the students begin right when the bell rings, and work continuously until either the bell ends the class, or you end the class soon after the bell.

Make transitions quick and efficient. Try to make activities such as your warm-up and directed instruction flow smoothly from one to the next.

Overlap business. Take roll during the warm up. Do necessary paperwork or counsel with misbehaving students while the class is working independently. Don’t stop instruction for unnecessary trivia. Get the trivia done when students are not dependent on you.

Even reluctant teenagers can be productive; they just need to be taught how to do it.

Jeff Combe