G-Town Talks

If you’ve ever wondered if small schedule changes can add up to a significant impact on student learning, consider the following proposed changes to our 38 minute instructional periods.

Currently our students enter our building at 7:23, yet we don’t start first period until 7:50. Next year, we propose to begin homeroom in first period at 7:35, with just five extra minutes tacked on to first period. We will only take three minutes to pass between classes instead of four minutes. We will conclude our last period at 2:07 instead of at 2:04. We will go from six 20 minute lunches with six twenty minute (useless) study halls to four 30 minute lunches.  We will utilize all current staff without any increase to FTE’s.

What do we gain? Our eight instructional periods increase from 38 to 42 minutes. Four minutes, doesn’t sound like that much does it?

Four minutes per period. It equals 32 minutes of additional instruction per day. 720 minutes of additional instructional time per period/38 minute periods we have currently = 18.9 additional periods of current instruction per class

OR more simply put: 32 minutes per day; 96 hours per year; 18.9 days of instruction added.

With four more minutes per period. Within the teachers’ contractual day, without additional expense. Gains all the way. Students even gain a longer lunch period. And this building isn’t so big, our kids are just conditioned (or have conditioned us) to take four minutes to get there.

Thanks to a great planning team for working out the details, we’re making some progress. Now it’s up to our cracker jack instructional team to put those four minutes per period to good use. And I haven’t even mentioned the potential blocking for Science and English teachers every other day. . .