Blocks VS Skinnies: The ins and outs of CHS’s new schedule
By Sunday Schuh
It’s 9:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, and the attention levels of CHS students are dwindling. By 9:30, students will have been in class for an hour and a half—a 13-minute increase from last year—and many will be forced to complete their unfinished work at home.
This year, Cody High School adopted a new schedule that utilizes two individual 90-minute ‘blocks’ in the morning and four 50-minute ‘skinnies’ in the afternoon. Staff and students alike are having mixed reviews regarding the new system's productivity, effectiveness, and overall flow.
The biggest changes to day-to-day operations at CHS are the jump from five universal 77-minute class periods to the mixture of different lengths, the addition of conjoined ‘pod’ classes, an Activity Prep period for athletes, and a two-semester break-up as opposed to a trimester one.
Brandon Undeberg has been a teacher at CHS for over six years, and claims that students simply aren’t able to focus for 90 minutes, even on work they are passionate about; “I think 90 minutes is too long. Around that 70-minute mark, students start shutting down, even though they love working on ceramics and throwing on the wheel, at the 70-minute mark they’re done; it’s just too much,” Undeberg said.
On the other hand, Undeberg also expressed that 50 minutes was not enough time to get a lot of real work done, especially in classes that require a significant amount of set-up and tear-down, like many Art, Science, and CTE courses; “you can hardly get anything done with 30 students in this room and technically one sink, cleanup takes 20 minutes and getting stuff out takes 10 minutes, so 30 of your 50 minutes is devoted to cleaning up or getting stuff out,” he added. This shift has forced staff to reevaluate the way that certain courses are laid out in order to maintain productivity levels, “I’m finding that projects that used to take two weeks during a 77-minute class are extending well over three weeks in a 50-minute class,” said Undeberg, who has had to cut out multiple projects in Art 2A and 2B to fit within the time constraints of 50 minutes per day.
When it comes to core classes like English, Math, and Social Studies, numerous students and parents are questioning if it’s possible to recreate a course in 50 minutes a day (year-long), or 90 minutes a day that was designed for 77-minute periods. “We had to go through and re-vamp [English 9] because it was built for two trimesters so we had to figure out if [students] are going to finish the whole class in one semester or two; we had to do some finagling,” commented ELA teacher Dawn Beaudrie, who is in her first year of teaching at the high school level.
Beaudrie revealed that she prefers the morning blocks for her classes; she believes that giving students a longer stretch to work helps minimize homework and allows for ample discussion time in class, “I really like mornings; since I came from a schedule where we had 50-minute classes it’s never been enough time,” added Beaudrie. “I know at the middle school we always used to ask for more time, especially in English classes because there is so much to cover so it makes it really difficult to go deep into your literature.” Beaudrie also explained that the lack of adequate learning time in the afternoons has led to a sharp increase in students finding themselves on the D.F.I. list, “I think looking at that list it’s having a [negative] effect; because the skinnies have homework and I think the high school students are very used to not having to have homework.”
On the other hand, some students, such as current senior Noelle Graham have voiced that the skinnies have been more beneficial for their own personal learning than the blocks, “I honestly think 50 minutes is more valuable than an hour and 17 minutes; I think that’s about how much we were focusing during that hour and seventeen anyways so I’d say during the 50-minute blocks people are learning a lot better,” said Graham. However, the consensus from most students has been consistent with that of core teachers: that 50 minutes is just too short. A survey conducted earlier this year revealed that less than 10% of students would prefer periods shorter than 60 minutes, and less than 1% of students would prefer classes to be 80 minutes or longer, reinforcing the idea that 77 minutes is the perfect sweet spot for both students and teachers. “I think what we had under trimesters was superior to blocks and superior to a seven-period day.” Said Undeberg.
A major contributing factor to the hybrid-class length this year is the introduction of ‘pod’ classes, which are essentially two or more classes joined together to provide a more enriching learning experience that incorporates multiple curriculums. So far, the pods have been a successful experiment in unconventional learning methods; “we have seen high student engagement and connections to all curriculum subjects,” said P.E. teacher Matt McFadden. The two 90-minute blocks in the morning are a direct result of accommodating these pods which keep students with the same teachers for the entire morning, three hours in total.
In addition to the switch in daily class length, CHS has implemented a major switch in overall course length: from three 12-week trimesters to two 18-week semesters. This shift came as a result of emerging concerns about classes being broken up awkwardly throughout the course of the year, in the case of classes that were taught as a two-part course, but only offered during the first and third trimesters.
The difference between semesters and trimesters is a relatively small change, but it might play a big role in the effectiveness of the new Activity Prep period. Over half of the students at CHS participated in a fall sport this year, and about one-third of those students are enrolled in Activity Prep during the 6th hour. Activity Prep allows these athletes to start their practices early, by watching film, setting up equipment, warming up, and performing injury treatment/prevention. Activity Prep also grants athletes a P.E. credit for their efforts at practice.
The original vision for Activity Prep was to “give our athletes a chance to eat a meal at home with their family,” and “help by reducing stress for multi-sport athletes and their families with the challenge of balancing academics, training, and personal time,” said McFadden, who is also Cody’s head football coach and a key contributor in the push for an Activity Prep hour. “Our athletes are extremely busy. Most are involved in multiple sports and activities. They often get home late and are up early. [With Activity Prep], teams start their training on average 30 minutes earlier, which means they finish 30 minutes earlier,” added McFadden.
While many students took advantage of the opportunity to get to practice early (and some coaches even required it), it hasn’t been advantageous for every sport. Tennis players this fall were admitted to use the Activity Prep hour, but it was a logistical struggle to truly begin practice early since CHS’s head tennis coach had to commute from Powell every day. “My coach lives in Powell so he couldn’t come until 4:15 anyways so I just didn't use [Activity Prep],” said Graham, a varsity tennis player. The girls’ swim team was put in a similar situation which meant that only three of the six fall sports offered here at the high school were taking full advantage of the time.
One of the biggest questions being raised about Activity Prep is what students are supposed to do once their sports seasons come to an end; which is what almost all athletes in Activity Prep are facing right now. Under a trimester layout, class switches lined up seamlessly with sports seasons, but now that the semester will run well past Christmas break, anyone not participating in a winter sport will stay enrolled in Activity Prep for the next two and a half months and the hour will essentially become a study hall. It may not be perfect yet, but McFadden believes “we are close” to fulfilling the original visions for the class; “it isn't perfect but with work and improvements we can create a product to benefit all stakeholders.”
Building a successful schedule for any school is difficult, and it may take a few tries before our administration reaches the best format. For now, the most important voices for refinement are those of the students that are affected by it every day. As Dawn Beaudrie put it, “parents and students need to be vocal because this is not an ideal schedule.”