Tuesday, September 25, 2007

180 days ?

The video presents an interesting perspective to the school year. I tried to evaluate how much time is taken away from instruction in my classroom and I have to say that I teach for more than 65 days. Other activities such as assemblies and test preparations do absorb a conciderable amount of classroom instruction time, more than I imagined. Perhaps a flexible period or time slot could be incorporated into each day to accomodate all of these events. Scheduling can be quite challenging, but perhaps electives and studyhalls can be coordinated in a time block so as little instruction as possible in core subjects is missed. This would allow for these events to occur daily if necessary, with little or no effect on classroom instruction. We need to make adjustments if we are to increase instruction time. The clock has no mercy and it waits for no one, we need to manipulate this time piece so that it works for us.

2 comments:

Prof. Bachenheimer said...

I like your poetic conclusion!

scooter5631 said...

By incorporating a flexible period, do you mean to extend the school day? If so, do you think this would be accepted by teachers, students, parents, etc? If not, isn't it possible that this extra period of non-instruction would compound the problem?

By the way, I also liked your conclusion. I thought you presented the problem as daunting with the hope of being manageable.