At Doherty High School the new block schedule is getting a lot of attention in good and bad ways, The block schedule consists of 4-period days that have an hour and 38-minute classes. There are blue and green days, green being periods 1-4 and blue being 5-8. There are also late start Mondays with school starting at 9:25 and classes only being an hour long with an additional class that meets once a week called CCR.
For students, the overall feeling from the survey and interviews is that the classes are too long and it can be hard to learn for that amount of time. Sophomore Addison Zager said, “I have a hard time focusing in the long class and I feel like we should have block day sometime in the week.”
Student Sean Smith had a similar opinion, saying, “It’s uncomfortable because an hour and 30 minutes or however long the classes are its just to long to be in the class.” With the classes being an hour and 38 minutes, it can be hard for students to retain the information that they are learning, especially if they don’t get breaks between lessons.
Freshman Brody Noll says he does not have enough time to get his work done in class. “No, not really, because I [am] getting bored in those long classes.” This was the same feelings many other students expressed: Classes are too long and it is easy to lose focus quickly. Although some classes may feel like they are jampacked with nonstop information, student Kaled Bardon says, “I feel like they don’t have enough stuff to teach us in an hour and 45 minutes.”
In some classes, our research showed that many teachers are struggling to find enough curriculum to keep each students for the amount of time that they are given. Students are still getting bored with having nothing to do if their teachers cannot fill the class with lessons. The majority of the students opinions are negative toward the block schedule, feeling like their days are never–ending
But do the teachers feel the same way?
“I like the block, but I wish that we were rotating where we were class the class every other day,” says math teacher Mrs. Sara Worthington. History teacher Mrs. Angela Bradford says, “It give the kid the opportunity to finish the work in class.” So the students have no excuses that their work isn’t done. With the longer class the students have more time to work on the work that the teacher give to them. With the opportunity that the student get the finish their work there really no complaining about the homework that they get because they didn’t do it on the time that there getting in class.
Math teacher Mrs. Heine has a similar opinion. She said, “I don’t mind the block schedule, but something has to change with Mondays.” She says it’s hard when on certain weeks she won’t see some of her students for four days. Depending on the schedule, with the alternating Mondays, some weeks students don’t see their teachers for four days and it can be hard to remember the lesson they had learned from the previous class.
Overall, the teachers seem to like the block schedule more than students, other than the alternating Mondays. Overall, not everyone likes the schedule, but some do like it. Lots of growing pains.
What did you think about the new schedule? Leave a comment below.
