180 days. 6 hours each. September to June.
That’s the way it was when I was growing up in Toronto. That’s the way it is for my students growing up in Yokohama.

Think your schedule sucks? What makes for a good timetable? Image by Guacamoliest from Flickr

Each year when we receive our weekly schedules at YIS, I stare at it dumbfounded. How the heck am I supposed to find effective ways of using five to twenty-five minute blocks of time in my classroom?

Last year I spent several hours sitting with my principal, trying to wiggle things about so that all three second grade classes could have the final period on Fridays together. It was such a complex, brain-numbing task that I asked him how this could be avoided in the future, and was introduced to the process by which our schedules are crafted.

Early in the year, November he said, we start compiling a list of requirements for the following year’s schedule. Things like “every class needs two 45 minute blocks of PE per week” or “teachers should have a minimum of 45 minutes of planning time per day”. When this list is finalized, these conditions are input to the application that generates the timetables across the school. If I were to have any influence over these things, I would have to submit my list of requested conditions for the following year, by the preceding November.

So I did. Last November, I approached my principal (a different one by this time), and explained how my earlier conversation had suggested that I should be bringing my thoughts to her now. She was great. She set up a submission form for all teachers to input their timetable wish-list a couple weeks later. My requests were pretty simple. They included minimum 30-minute classroom sessions, and a minimum and maximum number of teacher planning periods per day.

Because of my demonstrated interest in the makings of the timetable, I was invited to join a working group designed to explore the possibilities of its reinvention, across the school.

The invitation made me realize how little I know about what other schools out there are doing. What alternative models exist? I’ve started looking into it…

Apparently the existing September to June structure is based on agrarian roots. When kids needed to be around the farm to pitch in. This also accounts for the fall (aka harvest) break. See this article for more. As this is not so much the case for most schools (including mine) anymore, people have begun considering other ways.

One particularly popular and growing trend is year-round schooling. There are a few variations on this, but most seem to keep the basics, like an average of 180 days of school in place. The idea is that, however many terms you break the schedule up into, the holiday time is similarly equally divided. It could be something like four 45 day terms, with equal lengths of holiday in between them. The advocates of this structure celebrate it for diminishing the observed academic dip that can happen for students over a long summer holiday (though this dip, seems to be dominantly observed in lower-income households from this articles’s US-based research, as viewed in the chart above).

Block-Based Scheduling in action? From Ano Lobb on Flickr.

Another big point of discussion are the merits of block-based scheduling vs. the conventional 8-period day. Basically, this type of structure has students attending 4 periods per day, of somewhere near 90 minutes each. There are again, multiple variations on how to manage this, mostly in high school type settings. Two popular variations are where students either take only 4 courses at a time, over twice as many sessions through the year, or where students take 8 courses at the same time, but attend each one only every second day. Proponents of the block-scheduling make it’s case by pointing out how fewer transitions in the day mean fewer interruptions and thus, they conclude, more sustained learning time. The study I read, however, suggested that the qualitative data in terms of student learning was inconclusive.

Another point that surfaced in multiple places was the four-day school week. As it suggests, this variation has students in school for the same number of hours as during a normal week, but divided over four days. So, instead of 6 hours per day, it might be 7.5, with a three day weekend. The days themselves could be divided up any number of ways, but the hours would stay consistent. Advocates of this notion seem to push it for its economical advantages, transport and resource consumption take a nice dip. In another context, this argument might be compelling, but I’m interested in the ideals here for now.

I read quite a number of articles (see the list at the end of this post) but the majority of the discussion focused on one of the three subjects discussed above.

So, this week, in my second grade class we tried something different. As usual, we have a lot of big projects and inquiries presently on the go. When I looked at our schedule for Tuesday, I realized that with our usual PE session being cut to facilitate a high school sports day, my students would be in the class every minute of the day, and it was raining. I know my class well enough to know that this is a recipe for stir-crazy madness to creep in.

So, in writing up the day’s schedule on the board, I sketched in a morning planning meeting first thing, a goal reflection period at the end, and sprinkled a whole lot of question marks in between.

I also drew up a short list of my goals for the day, including things like “discuss creative options for sharing at our Species Education Day next week” and “work with a friend to help them assess their 3D solid riddles” (which we’d been writing over the past few days).

My students always check the board pretty much first thing when they walk in, to have an idea of what’s planned for the day, and that day’s schedule got a lot of discussion going. We sat down for our morning planning meeting and I opened the discussion by explaining that today was going to work differently. I had my goals for the day, and I showed my short list, and I wanted to know what their goals for the day were. Students took a few moments to consider and then contributed their items to their goals list. I then asked them to think about what their personal goals were for the day. What did they want to have accomplished by the end of the day, considering how much time we had to work towards it? After a few minutes more, each student had articulated their goal for the day. Some chose to write it down, others didn’t. We then looked at our goals and tried to figure out if any needed to happen before others could. This helped us figure out what we needed to start with… And then they began.

Over the course of this year, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen my class as focused, supportive, independent and productive as they were that day. We even accomplished four of my five goals. At the end of the day, in our goal reflection meeting, each student shared what they’d been able to accomplish and how they thought about their goal. They were very thoughtful and candid for the most part, some reflecting on how overly or insufficiently ambitious their goals had been. But, the most interesting reaction I got was when I asked them how they had liked organizing their own time for the day. “I liked it!” chorused several. “I didn’t like it, I loved it!” said another. “I didn’t love it, I’m in love with it!” added a third. The next day, we tried again, with similar success. And the next…

Awesome and independent as usual, given self-determination and responsibility in their timetabling, my students just dig into it. Photo by Jamie Raskin

This has given me a lot to think about for the next academic year, and some significant pause for considerations of timetabling generally. Here’s where it leaves me… Obviously, in elementary, when most learning is concentrated in one room, you have more flexibility to allow time to be broadly student-directed. In upper school, things are far more departmentalized. But there’s clearly enormous benefit to be had from allowing significant use of time to be student-directed. So, how do you do it? What kind of timetabling and teacher/student conferencing would best allow for the flexibility required for students to set a good amount of their own learning goals, and structure their own time on the way towards achieving them?

I realize this is more a starting place for the timetabling question than a conclusion. But at least I have a sense of one ingredient that is not optional. However teachers and administrators approach parceling out time, individual and collective student voice needs to be part of the decision-making process. I’m looking forward to writing a lot of question marks on the schedule next year…

Further Reading:

• NMSA Research Summary: Flexible Scheduling
• National Conference of State Legislatures on 4-day school weeks
• A broad selection of scheduling-related readings from the Education Commission of the States
• Modified School Schedules (interesting ideas towards the end…)
• What Research Says About Re-organizing School Schedules: The Center for Public Education
• Year-round Schooling from Education Week
• On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time

Related Reading:

• Should recess be before or after lunch? From the Journal of Child Nutrition and Management
• Ewan McIntosh’s blog offers lost of thoughts on working with time in a school context, a couple interesting posts include: Making a Creativity-Friendly School Timetable and Free Up Time by Freeing Up the Timetable.