The most important thing that high schools should provide are great learning environments. School settings should encourage independent thinking and student achievement, and in order to reach this atmosphere, administrators experiment with various techniques to boost students personally and academically. Among the success-driven trials are changes in scheduling, because new routines result in new outcomes.

Metea Valley is scheduled traditionally, meaning that students have seven 40-45 minute class periods and one lunch period per day. These schedules typically remain unchanged the following semester.

However, despite traditional scheduling being the norm in our district, there are schools that do not adhere to this program. Instead, some schools use block scheduling. Block schedules propose four 90-100 minute classes and one lunch period per day. The initial set of four classes switch to another four either every other day or every other semester depending on the school.

With traditional scheduling, seven classes often results in more homework every day, as opposed to the four classes with block scheduling that results in less homework. Yet the decrease in block schedule homework may be accompanied by an increase in difficulty.

Both schedules have pros and cons, not only to students, but to faculty as well. “I [would] fear having too much time every other day with classes would make it easier for [students] to disengage and be disruptive,” Spanish teacher Brandi Bane said. But on the other hand, teachers would have more planning time for classes.

Different schools prefer different schedules and different methods work better on different people. So which do you think is more beneficial?

By Nurah Lambert