Note: To protect the privacy of our members, e-mail addresses have been removed from the archived messages. As a result, some links may be broken.

Lesson Plans


Re: Block Schedules

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Debbie M Zafereo (zafereo)
Sat, 20 Apr 1996 18:46:04 -0500 (CDT)

I teach at a two-year old middle school in Texas. We opened with block
scheduling, and I have enjoyed the luxury of 1 1/2 hour classes.
BUT...
Now the nightmare has begun. We have so many students that we don't have
enough electives with the six periods we teach (each teacher has
three classes daily in a four period day and sees each class every other
day).
The solution to reducing the 35-40+ class sizes? Elective teachers
are losing a planning period every other day. We will teach four
classes of three different grade levels straight through with only a
(ha!) 30 minute lunch break. Adding the extra class will reduce the
numbers each period AND prevent the necessity of hiring another elective
teacher. So now we can hire a core curriculum teacher instead. After all,
in our district, core teachers get an extra stipend daily for each
student they teach over the class limit of 30.

On Mon, 15 Apr 1996, Judy Grochowski wrote:

> Greetings!
> I've subscribed to this list just in the last month and have to say
> THANKS to all! These posts are a joy to come home to every day-kinda like
> tapping into my own support system-and all the ideas I've gotten are
> terrific! So now, a question (and I apologize, because I sense this has been
> gone over before), our High School is beginning to investigate various block
> schedules-both 4 and 8 block. What are some concerns, caveats, or problems
> of which we (the Art Department) should be aware? Also, what issues are
> important to the school as a whole? Our current set up is semester-long
> courses and we currently have 3 teachers in our department(2 f.t. and 1 p.t.).
> Any and all comments appreciated!
> Thanks,
> Judy Grochowski
> Greenfield High School
> Greenfield, Wisconsin 53220
>
>