<p>My oldest two went to different high schools, and each had a block schedule. Both had A and B days, and they loved having class every other day so that they could schedule homework and never have a surprise assignment due the very next day. Both had a longer 3rd period class with lunch shifts scheduled during it. </p>
<p>S1’s had A days on Mon & Wed, and B days on Tues, Thurs, with Fridays running the entire schedule in shortened classes. </p>
<p>S2’s school (and it’s S3’s school too) runs A and B days, so that one week A classes meet MWF, and the next week A classes meet TTh. They have 4 lunch shifts (the school has 3 cafeterias to service all 4,500 students in those 4 shifts). S3 has D lunch, so he eats after 1:00. No biggie - he takes a snack bar every day. </p>
<p>I agree the 90 minute classes take some getting used to, but I think overall it’s a positive. Having class for just 50 minutes really makes it hard to get much done - questions before a test, lab work, rehearsal time (including getting instruments out and put away), etc. The whole student body takes 7 classes, and the 8th period is a school wide study hall at the same time, so teachers are available for questions and help, or students can get together to work on projects or extra rehearsal time. </p>
<p>Bottom line, I (and my kids), love the block schedule. I agree your school messed up lunch though. too bad they didn’t research a little see how other schools are doing the block schedule successfully before implementing with no plan other than having students sit on teh floor.</p>
<p>Call the fire department and find out what their rules are. In my area, the fire department has no patience and no tolerance for situations that would endanger kids and firemen in an emergency. This sounds truly disastrous. Better safe than sorry. </p>
<p>IMHO, block scheduling is just the latest educational fad to try something new so it will seem that education is now “better.” Personally, I think it’s dumb and confusing. But it’s been a very long time since I was in high school so it doesn’t effect me. My D likes it because she thinks it means, for most courses, she has an extra day to do homework.</p>
<p>But …</p>
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</p>
<p>… only one lunch period should have nothing to do with block scheduling.</p>
<p>I didn’t care for block scheduling when I first heard about it, but it does work well for the kids. Our high schools have alternating A and B days, with 4 periods per day. Period 3 is lunch, with 3 different lunch waves - lunch waves are assigned by classroom, with most of the same classes on a single hall in the same lunch (reduces disruptions from noise in the hallways).</p>
<p>I would call the fire marshall and insist something be done - it’s not safe having the hallways clogged like that - in our school they’re bad enough between periods as everybody is moving class to class. Also, if they’re serving the entire school in one lunch period, I feel sorry for the kids at the end of the lunch line. </p>
<p>The school may think it’s OK to try this out, but I doubt the fire marshall will be too pleased. We just found out our marching band is in a pinch hosting a competition in October because the lights on the football fields don’t have emergency backup. Our Parent Association president is a volunteer firefighter, so he knows what the Fire Marshall will accept, and we are working on solutions. But meanwhile the football teams might have to have their games moved. The school department has known about this since last year (told by an outside contractor who was updating our lights and installing new bleachers, and now the Fire Marshall knows). Can you imagine the school being told to stop serving lunch? I bet while they’re serving, even if many kids move to the hall with their lunches, they will exceed the legal capacity of the cafeteria for fire code. The obvious solution is a split lunch - but I’m sure that will cost more, because the lunch staff will need longer hours to serve the meals.</p>
<p>Again, cafeteria use is more a result of space and number of students, not block scheduling.
When I was in the 8th grade (a million years before anyone ever heard of block scheduling) I had lunch third period at 10:15am. Given the number of students at my school, there just wasn’t room for us later in the day.</p>
<p>In our school district, all students in high school have lunch at the same time. Schools vary in the degree to which they let students leave campus (some allow everyone to do so, some only upperclassmen; some allow students to leave in cars; others only allow them to walk to nearby shopping centers). Only a few students buy food in the cafeteria, and the cafeterias are quite small.</p>
<p>The advantages of this arrangement are that extracurricular activities can meet during lunch and teachers can schedule meetings with students for make-up tests, extra help, or other purposes during that time. Also, the students love this lunch arrangement because they can spend their lunch break with whomever they choose if they’re not involved in an organized activity. The disadvantages are that most of the kids are eating junk, often while sitting on the floor, if they bother to eat at all. And the system reinforces the stigma attached to being entitled to a free or reduced-price lunch (since these are the only kids who ever venture into the cafeteria).</p>
<p>None of this has anything to do with block scheduling.</p>
<p>I completely agree that sitting on the floor is not acceptable for safety and hygiene reasons. It also makes it difficult for girls wearing skirts or dresses–attire stipulated by certain religious groups–to sit comfortably and modestly. And male classmates seated on the floor will be in a position to get a eyeful when girls in skirts or dresses stand up near them. Maybe I’m a prude, but this sounds like trouble waiting to happen, especially now that thongs have become somewhat mainstream in popularity.</p>
<p>Block schedule has been great for our kids. They have 2 days for any hw, they have yet to get sick from sitting on the ground, laying on the ground, or any other dining position. Girls in skirts seem to do ok too…although the length of the skirt is more my beef! The entire 3000 students eat at the same time. But again, many upperclass do not have a class after lunch and go home, and we live in sunny California and eating outside is actually preferable to the stuffy cafeteria. Works for us. Maybe Californians are just weird…and have very strong immune systems. ;-)</p>
<p>We had block scheduling for about 4 years and thankfully, they finally ditched it. Our schedule was 5 periods per day, trimesters. So, a few year of class was supposedly done in 2 trimesters…except, it wasn’t. The teachers never adapted to the longer periods and simply gave more “homework” time. </p>
<p>Test results quickly decreased because students would go almost a year between math or Spanish–have it trimesters 1/2 one year and 2/3 the next. Maybe with a larger school or alternating days, it might have worked, but I don’t think trimesters work at all when the subject matter is only 2/3 of the year.</p>
<p>Here they do A day B day block schedule for middle and high school (8 classes total). High school has 2200 students with 4 lunch shifts in the middle of the 3rd class of the day. Some kids do eat at 10am but these kids have also eaten breakfast at 6am usually, so they tend to be hungry. </p>
<p>I think the A/B block schedules are great because there is less wasted time each day changing classes, settling in and begining the next class. They get about 90 mins per class each day. It is really great for science classes/labs.</p>
<p>My best year K-12 was my sophomore year, when I attended a school with block. What I loved about it was that there was time to do more in-depth and interesting things than could be done in the usual 50-minute period. In Biology, we had time to go down to the river bordering the school, take soil and water samples, bring them back to the classroom, look at them under the microscope, and write up the lab – all in one session. Even PE was better: We did a bicycle unit, and the block allowed us to do fun off-campus stuff like road rallies, obstacle courses, and scavenger hunts. </p>
<p>OP, the lunch situation sounds bad, but that’s a logistical problem which hopefully can be worked out. In my experience, block has a lot to offer students if done well.</p>
<p>Our school does block scheduling, and still has three lunches. It is wonderful for STEM students, for studying math and for project work. Ours is what is called a modified block where 8 classes are taken a semester/4 every day. Other block schedules operate with a year’s worth of material completed in a semester. That was not considered appropriate for our demographics. The school has seen higher test scores and greater AP class participation as a result.</p>
<p>Of course, starting school later and finishing even later would add a few minutes a day and allow lunch to be better ‘positioned’ but we can’t really do that… The end result is that in our medium LAC sized high school (many thousands of students) the kids start before 8, leave a bit after 3, and the school facility is large enough that they need to speedwalk between classrooms… Or they get into scheduling faux-passes like half Geometry then lunch then the OTHER half of Geometry, and so on…</p>
<p>Our h.s. was on an “A day/B day” schedule when my kids first started. They had eight year long classes.<br>
Week 1= A day…3 days/week and B day…two days a week
Week 2= A day…2 days/week and B day…three days/week</p>
<p>I thought the switching back and forth was confusing but they liked having two days to get homework done. Some AP classes were “double blocked” meaning they met 5 days a week for 90 minutes/day. S1’s AP Bio and AP Calc. were double blocked. So his junior and seniors years he only got 7 credits instead of 8.</p>
<p>Right after S1 graduated and S2 was a rising soph. the system changed to 4 ninety minute classes per semester. The reason for the change was to increase graduation rates by offering students who were failing required courses more opportunities to retake the class in the same academic year. </p>
<p>Our h.s has always had four lunch periods. It’s based on what halls the kids are on at lunch time. Our schools do not allow students to leave for lunch.</p>
<p>Most high schools in our county have been on block schedules since the mid 90s. I believe they run 4 classes per semester, with 90 minute class periods. In recent years block scheduling seems to have fallen increasingly into disfavor, and some schools have switched to a traditional schedule. My local high school, which D attended, is one of the academically higher performing minority that never adopted the block schedule. I understand this was originally primarily because of a strong commitment to the music programs. (Music skills are best developed via year-round instruction and practice).</p>
<p>The advantages of the block schedule are the stronger focus on a few subjects at a time, reduced loss of time due to context switching, and ability to delve more deeply during a longer class period. It also allows a student to take an extra academic course per year. On the other hand, the semester-long breaks between consecutive classes in subjects such as math and foreign language tend to lead to loss of knowledge. The instructional hours per subject are less (this is the downside of being able to fit in an extra subject). The schedule doesn’t mesh at all well with national exams such as AP exams.</p>
<p>Interesting reading - we have block scheduling with every other day classes which we call odd or even days (periods 3,5,7 vs Periods 2,4,6. Period 1 is an hour which meets every morning at 7 mainly junior or seniors take a period 1). The whole school has 2 periods before lunch and one after so everybody has lunch from 12:15 to 1:00. Juniors and seniors can leave campus with a permit on file and many don’t have an afternoon class on at least one of the days.</p>
<p>Now we are in California so weather isn’t a big deal usually. They have a food court type area to buy lunches but no real indoor cafeteria. Kids just eat anywhere on campus they want. I asked my son what they do on rainy days and he says they can eat in the gym or some classrooms or they just find shelter outside.</p>
<p>Our HS has block scheduling, although the school board is considering its elimination, since it actually costs more than regular 6 period days.</p>
<p>The problem is that, with budget cuts, our juniors and seniors are strongly urged to take 3 classes, rather than 4. Overall, they end up with a few more classes than traditional schedule, but they definitely are not getting the benefit of the block scheduling.</p>
<p>Both D and I liked the A/B block scheduling. With regard to sitting on the floor, they’ll most likely live through it. They are more likely to encounter nastier stuff in the gym and on the cafeteria tables.</p>
like half Geometry then lunch then the OTHER half of Geometry, and so on…</p>