For kicks one year, a fellow teacher and I had once created a school-year calendar of excuses that children could not learn on a particular day. Distractions ranged from the Christmas holiday, Student Council elections, day after the Super Bowl, etc. I found the short film “180” to parallel the ideas found in that calendar.
Teachers know that education is about quality, not quantity. Time on-task is probably one of the prime indicators of student success in a particular classroom. “Days on task” should then be the measure we use when analyzing the effectiveness of the schedule. Schools have made great strides to improve instruction through professional development, new textbooks, new staff, even new subjects.
Through all of this reform, education clings to its standard schedule Though its primary function is outdated, Americans still like their summer break, Labor Day last hurrah, and return to school. Spiral curriculum and semester long overlaps have been designed into curricula in order to accommodate this large break. Just as so many measures have been created with students’ best interest in mind so too may have come the time for this concern to be evidence in our schedule.
1 comment:
Beyond the schedule, I think schools have sacrificed the sanctity of the classroom to a certain degree in exchange for other pursuits. Sporting events, school plays, instrumental band and other extracurricular activities are more and more creeping into the school day. While they used to firmly remain before school, after school, or lunch activities, it is my perception that students are out of class more for other commitments. Now is that a bad thing? As you mentioned, time on task is the key.
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