School should consider schedule changes for next year

February 26, 2009 — by Vijay Menon and Apeksha Sharma

Ever find yourself stuck at home on a Sunday night spending your time cramming for the upcoming biology test while trying to multitask and finish off a practice write for English?

For many students, this is an almost weekly occurrence thanks to the partial block schedule that requires students to attend all classes on Monday. As the school debates the pros and cons of moving to a full block schedule, the time is ripe to finally do away with the unpopular partial block system and solve the “Monday problem.”

Ever find yourself stuck at home on a Sunday night spending your time cramming for the upcoming biology test while trying to multitask and finish off a practice write for English?

For many students, this is an almost weekly occurrence thanks to the partial block schedule that requires students to attend all classes on Monday. As the school debates the pros and cons of moving to a full block schedule, the time is ripe to finally do away with the unpopular partial block system and solve the “Monday problem.”

While the proposed full block isn’t perfect, there are still several reasons why this switch should take place.

Classes are far less productive on Mondays than they are on normal block days due to the brief 47-minute periods that don’t allow for much teaching of new material.

Under the current schedule, students are forced to spend their weekends cramming to complete homework for all their classes. This creates conflict for students with extracurricular activities and makes the weekend essentially an extension of the school week.

Many teachers are also notorious for giving tests on Monday. Students are often rushed and don’t perform as well on these tests as they would on a full block day. Yet the benefits of a switch to full block go beyond simply improving Mondays for students.

These include the creation of an eighth period allowing student athletes not to miss any class time, the embedding of four tutorial periods and the consistency of a schedule on a day-to-day basis.

While some have expressed concerns that students wouldn’t see teachers as many times per week, the amount of time spent in each class remains the same under the new schedule as it does now, and the advantages of making such a switch far outweigh any potential disadvantages of keeping the current schedule.

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