Block Scheduling Not to be Beneficial in Upcoming School Years

A block schedule, with less periods during the day and longer classes has been adapted by schools like Pewaukee, Franklin, Waunakee, Sussex Hamilton, Oconomowoc, Kimberly, and more around the area. Like these schools, HUHS is following in the block schedule path and will be implementing a mesh of the two schedules for the 2021-22 school year.

In a video sent out to HUHS students and their families, Superintendent Jeffery Walters said this block schedule will “increase and maximize instructional minutes.”

The block schedule will increase the 300+ instructional minutes per day to 350+ minutes per day. While this might seem good in a short timeline, it can become challenging for students in the long run.

It is already hard to pay attention during a 45 minute long class for most students, and as this time is prolonged students will be more likely to lose focus and doze off. With the higher risk of losing focus, they will be distracted from learning more information.

In addition to this, students will be further behind when missing a day of class. Instead of missing 45 minutes of class in the normal schedule, they will now be missing 90 minutes worth, putting them further behind.

And because the teachers will be spending much more time with the students, they can lose their patience over time.

According to Thought Exchange, “lecturing for 80 minutes will likely cause any teacher to become hoarse over the course of a few days and possibly lose the attention of students, resulting in decreased learning.”

Not only will the students have to adjust, but so will the teachers who have to create longer learning plans and reformat previous lessons to fit in the longer class periods.

Many students come to HUHS from schools like Rossman, Lincoln, Central, Erin, or others. None of these schools have the block schedule so the adjustment to high school is made more challenging. Even though it might have the advantage of “less time devoted to start up/shut down” there should be an expected time given to get used to this.

The new schedule will not be the only stress on students and teachers, though.

With the uncertainty of COVID, how next year looks for schools around the world is completely unknown to everybody. If things do stay the same, implementing a completely new curriculum can make schooling more difficult than it already will be.

However if it does get better, there will still be confusion with the adjustment to a whole new learning plan.

With or without COVID next year, the block schedule is a completely new thing to many students and will be confusing and hard to adjust to for everybody.

It would be a little easier to follow the block schedule if it was in a different format. The best alternative to a meshed schedule would be just to choose the A and B method because it allows students to have more classes. This schedule would not be as complicated, as there would only be one schedule to follow.

There are still some benefits to the new block schedule such as the “Oriole time” being added to the schedule, which will give more time for ACT preparations, reassments, and many more opportunities for growth and improvement.