Frustrated teachers and administrators are trying to figure out what is wrong with their school’s performance. Low performing schools, like many of the ones I see, are banging their heads against the wall trying to break the standardized test score barrier to get their school off the hook. They research methods other schools are using, calling staff from different areas in a desperate attempt to find out what is the secret magic that brings their scores higher.
I was sitting in those
meeting many times, listening to my colleagues arguing for one method or
another. One person is claiming that a certain technique worked so well somewhere,
resulting in a higher score, and someone else presenting just the opposite,
arguing that another school, using that same technique, sees no progress.
This is the time when I am
waiting for that innocent child, who sees the facts as they are and speaks out
the truth… to cry “The Emperor is naked!” pointing to reality that everyone
pretends not to notice… The fact that, for example, this wonderful, high performing
school, is in a privileged area, with well educated and well to do population,
and long waiting list that efforts losing few trouble makers, and thus pressuring
students and parents – to meet their standards or hit the road…
When I am assigned to a new
school and I want to get a feeling for its academic rank and culture, I always
check its bell schedule…
My good colleagues at the
west area schools enjoy a relaxed bell schedule. They start at 8:00, have about
50 minutes-long classes, enjoy nutrition recess, unwind for 35 minutes at lunch
break, have a nice 7 minutes passing time between periods - the same schedule
that they have had for 20 years…
The stressed out schools
start before 8:00, have no nutrition recess, shorter lunch, mean 4 minutes
passing period, and the greatest “fix-it-all” - block scheduling…
If you have taught math at a
low-performing school with block scheduling you know what I mean… I am not saying
it is a bad idea all together – it might work for art, music, PE, even social
studies, but not math, for more than one reason. To start - there is no way you
can keep students’ attention for more than 40 minutes, in the best case; 20
minutes to teach the lesson and 20 minutes for practice, collectively and individually.
After that they lose they concentration and become restless and impatient. So –
how do you fill 90 minutes, or worse, 110 minutes?
Yes, you can show them a
movie, talk to them about current events, teach them about the world (my
favorite passing time activity…) but the fact is still the same – there is that
much material that you have to cover each week, month, semester. Since you now meet your class only 2 or 3 times
a week you have to give double dose of the material in each meeting. It means
that after the first 40 minutes, with maybe a short break, you have to do
another round of 40 minutes teaching the next section. Learning math is
challenging enough as it is, and to have it absorbed and ready to be applied – it
needs to be administered in a bite size… Dealing with two mouthful quantities
to be swallowed, digested, and processed is quite impossible!
School age youngsters need to
move around, spend energy, play and refresh their minds before being ready to
absorb more learning. Long periods in the same seat is almost impossible for
most students, especially for middle schoolers. The notion that more is better,
resulting in maximizing the in-class minutes, especially in low-performing
schools, is ineffective, and even counter-effective! More and more researches
are showing that recess is not only what students want, but also what students
need in order to perform well. Studies had proved that outside, playground,
time, helps students refresh their minds, exhaust their energy and prepares
them for refocusing their mind on learning. Furthermore – researchers found a
direct positive correlation between exercise and academic performance!
Countries that excel in education level, like Finland and some Asian countries,
have shorter periods and longer, and more often, recesses!
Unfortunately, education
leaders believe that fixing our failing schools depends on how many classroom minutes
we provide our learners, and the tighter the schedule is, the better education
we deliver. Not surprisingly, then, that low performing schools squeeze seven
periods a day, some in block schedule, have short or no breaks, and very brief
passing periods. They administer remedy without a sound proof that it cures the
ailment, and ignore the fact that while no real evidence supports that more is
better, volume of data claims that actually less is better!
In analyzing the consequence
of bell and block scheduling, we weigh mainly students’ achievements, of
course. We do forget, however, to consider its effect on teachers. Teachers’
comfort and well being has a direct impact on their job effectiveness, not to
mention those basic human rights of a working individual…
Let’s talk about lunch break,
for example. Lunch breaks are never long enough to enable teachers to recharge
before the next section of the day. When the bell-ring announces lunch break,
the students charge out instantly, but the teacher has some closing to do - erase the board, turn off electronic devices, pick up few papers from the
floor, maybe replace the materials - getting ready for the next period, and
very often exchange few words with some students for one reason or another;
precious minutes that are taken away from his/her recess time…
At one school we had block scheduling with 110 minutes long blocks, a nightmare for every math teacher in a low performing school… The morning session included two consecutive blocks with only 7 minutes between them… If you were not one of the lucky teachers with a conference before lunch, or the bathrooms were not next door, you were doomed to work four hours without a bathroom break…
At another school we had a 30-minutes lunch break. Because of school size, and the fact that bathrooms were not available
at the bungalows where I taught, I could never get to the cafeteria until
almost the end of the break. By then the cafeteria workers had already remove
most of the food items, closed the cashiers and most infuriating - emptied the
coffee pots. If there is something I desperately needed at that time, is a good
cup of coffee, but as I, at last, reached the promised cafeteria, I would watch
with dismay how my precious coffee is being poured down the drain…
Other schools don’t even have faculty cafeteria so teachers have to
waste precious lunch minutes standing in line with the students (yeah… they do
get priority) and then waste more time marching to the teachers’ lounge… not
much fun…
It almost feels like the
whole school time machine is aimed at limiting teachers’ comfort and causing
them a constant race against time. If you have a conference period with
important business to take care of, you are asked to cover another class. If
you get to school early because you need to do some prep work, someone needs
your help. If you plan on leaving early – forget it! And if you get to the
cafeteria, desperately needing few minutes to eat and relax, they reject your $20
bill that you carefully remembered to bring (cash only! no checks or credit
card!)
So, stepping to a school, not
knowing much about its academic level, culture and intensity of teachers’
pressure – check out the bell schedule… This is a good indicator for school’s
stress level…
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