Crookston High mulls 8-period day
January 10, 2013 at 11:26 am in Grand Forks Herald
Crookston High School students might be going to an eight-period day starting next fall, but, instead of more classes, it would mean more time for homework. The school is considering adding an extra hour each day after teachers expressed concern about homework completion. Continue Reading
I think the better answer is to go to an 8 day week. More time to get things done.
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Not so funny as you might have thought.
During my time in Grand Forks junior-high school, we had a six- or seven-day school “week”. This was called “Flexible Scheduling”. The day was broken up into less-than-an-hour periods called “Mods”, short for Modules. I don’t remember how many “Mods” were in a school day–twelve? Fourteen? Some crazy non-even-division like 23 minutes, or 35 minutes or whatever. And it’s not that we went six days a week, but we had a six- or seven (I forget) day rotation. The classes we had on Monday one week was done on Tuesday or Wednesday the next week.
You’re not so far off as you’d suggested. Been done, and done locally. Apparently the administration didn’t like it much since they dropped it like a broken rubber sometime after I was gone.
Yet another wild idea inflicted on the students and teachers by an administration looking desperately for some way to overcome their own basic inadequacy and ineffectiveness.
Park River high school–maybe elementary school–used to have an actual six-day school week for part of the year. They had classes on Saturday. This was because the rural students were expected to work on the farm through harvest, and they did not attend classes. Then they moved to town for the winter and stayed in dormitories; all the students went six days a week to make up for the time the rural students missed earlier in the school year.
The “in-town” students did not appreciate the extra days in class. Just ask my Mother.
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Farm kids still can stay and work on the farm during school day when needed. I know some that were out for 2 weeks to work beet harvest.
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Crazy.
How can they call it “HOMEwork” when the school is going to force them to do it on-site?
How does this help a kid develop self-reliance, self-organizational skills, and self-motivational skills if the school is merely going to hold their little handsie and nursemaid them?
First Guess: The teachers won’t be paid for the additional time, but the administrators will.
Second Guess: The police are completely on-board. The more that schools resemble prisons–complete with occasional lock-downs–the better they like it. Less time for the inmates to be loose on Society and causing problems. More enforced “seat-time”, lower crime rate.
Third Guess: The parents love it. An entire hour of additional “FREE” day-care.
Our society is deceived; “attendance” does not equal “learning”. It’s gotten so that mere attendance has become more important than what used to be the desired outcome.
Students who are never permitted to fail are never allowed to truly succeed; and can take no pride in the attempt.
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FOURTH guess: This has way more to do with passing standardized tests and the political ramifications thereof, than passing along knowledge. They’re willing to sacrifice the reinforcement of study habits to look good for the State and Feds.
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“Our society is deceived; “attendance” does not equal “learning”. It’s gotten so that mere attendance has become more important than what used to be the desired outcome.”
Of course, since, as was witnessed in a previous article, attendance is all about Federal funds flowing into schools.
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Who besides me remembers the Grand Forks School District #1 policies circa 1970?
The Superintendent claimed (lied) that the school district didn’t profit from the Impact Aid provided by the Feds to cover the costs associated with all the Air Base students; yet we had the longest school year in the entire State. There was no such thing as a storm day most years–although Base and Rural students could go home “coincidentally” at the exact time that the Feds specified was acceptable for a full school day for the purpose of receiving Federal funding.
Who was in charge of Grand Forks schools at that time? Is he dead yet? If so, he must have been spinning about seven thousand RPM in the grave last Friday, when schools were closed for the LAMEST, WEAKEST, most UNDER-PERFORMING BLIZZARD IN THE HISTORY OF GRAND FORKS.
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I thought 8 period days were the standard? That is what we used in my highschool. School started at 8:20 and was over at 315. You had 8 periods and a 15 minute homeroom and luch period. Each class was around 40 to 45 minutes. Most students scheduled a study hall and it was up to you to use it wisely or goof off. The only students who scheduled 8 periods of classes were behind on they’re credits. It worked great, perfect amount of time to teach what was needed and perfect amount of time for the attention spans of a 14-18 yo kid. I fail to see the debate over this schedule? If the kid does not learn what the course requires in class they need to spend more time working on that subject at home.
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I had the same timing schedule, it was a choice of choice of taking band/choir or taking study hall, the rest were classes.
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