There are high school teachers in this district from many different curriculum areas who are extremely concerned about teaching the same amount of material with thirty fewer hours of class time per subject. Teachers discussed this issue last year during lunch periods, during hall duty, in departmental meetings, and in the copy room. We shared our frustrations over having to choose which parts of the curriculum to omit or which parts of the curriculum to cover at a much more shallow depth. Even the survey some of us completed last spring did not contain a choice for returning to the traditional schedule. There are, admittedly, some positive aspects to block scheduling.
Teachers have fewer lesson plans to prepare and more time to grade assignments.
Students have two nights to do homework and fewer classes each day. The bottom line is that teachers cannot teach nor can students learn the same amount of curriculum at the same level of comprehension with thirty fewer hours of class time. Even allowing 5-7 minutes for administrative tasks like taking roll and making homework assignments, teachers and students are still losing approximately 22 hours of class instruction time per subject. I would ask everyone involved in block scheduling last year to think back to the last six weeks of school. The following are some of the situations I observed.