<p>I don’t know if this was posted yet, but it’s interesting and confirms what I thought watching my kids go through school.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/</a></p>
<p>This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. </p>
<p>First of all, I hope that the slant her is NOT against teachers. Teachers are not the source of all a student’s pain. Perhaps the blame there should be on standards, requirements, etc.</p>
<p>My son is a first year teacher. His school system has a program in place where all first year teachers have a mentor of sorts in place. Great idea. Depending on who your mentor is. </p>
<p>The “mentor” is someone who is not currently in a classroom. Their assignment is to follow several first years across the district to help ensure success, check lesson planning, classroom instruction,etc. </p>
<p>Trouble can be, that this “mentor” seems to think the classroom is “her way or the highway”. Son certainly has much to learn but he IS very recent to that student in the classroom - he sat in that classroom seat very recently and he recognizes some of the things mentioned verbatim this article. The endless sitting. The loss of focus when classroom participation is not encouraged. </p>
<p>He came home this week and shared frustration with his “mentor”. She came into his class to teach a lesson. It was an algebra lesson for 3 classes. The first class the mentor would teach and he (son) would observe. The second section of algebra that day they would team teach the lesson. The third hour he would teach alone and the mentor would observe. He said it was all he could do to not jump out of his seat and interject at the way the mentor treated the kids (inner city school, all boys). Lots of shushing the kids up when they had questions. Harsh. Loud voice. Apparently that is her way to maintain “control”. The kids of course reacted in a non-positive/productive way! He was ashamed that an adult would treat the kids that way. It truly pained him. The team teaching was a bit tough - two different personalities in front of the classroom - and him, not truly teaching with his own so far successful methods. By class three when he could do it “his way”, the class was under control, animated, actively participating - not totally without behavior incidents, but it was handled. </p>
<p>He has different classroom seating arrangements for different classes. Some of the classes can take a 4 desk pod arrangement. Some cannot - those classes know when they enter the room that they take their desk and move it. They recognize it better for them. No big deal. </p>
<p>This is a good article to re-open eyes. Now we just need teachers, schools, parents to recognize the need for some flexibility in a student’s day. Sometimes all students, sometimes a particular student. </p>
<p>Another thought - it would interesting to ask a variety of students, “what should a teacher do differently to help you focus and pay attention in class.” I’ll be there are some things that teachers do that are really counterproductive for some students! </p>
<p>Yes, I should have been clear. This is not teacher bashing, but it is talking about the day that students face.</p>
<p>I was thinking it was interesting in light of another conversation on another thread about how school might not be doing as well with boys as with girls. A lot of the things mentioned here, the endless sitting and passive listening were challenges for my youngest daughter, who needs to move around a lot more.</p>
<p>Does it seem to other parents that there is more sitting around and less moving built into the school day, now, or is that me?</p>
<p>My daughter had classes that were on the third floor, then 1st floor, then 3rd floor then 2nd floor then 1st (actually another building), then 3rd floor again.
5 min passing time, heaven forbid if they had to go pee or to a locker.
That’s what I thought you meant with exhaustion!</p>
<p>Haha! No. </p>
<p>But I actually think that’s an issue related to the article, as well. How students are making it through their school days now. </p>
<p>And none of my kids use their lockers - they carry around their ridiculously heavy backpacks all day long! They said there’s not time to get to their lockers between classes.</p>
<p>Those schedules seem odd. Lunch is pretty early in both students’ schedules, and neither student has PE. In addition, the 1:25 class times are longer than the class times I remember in high school (0:50 or something like that each day; the school now does 3 days of 0:50 and 1 day of 1:30 per week for each class period).</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t have PE.
She was on school sports teams. The only way she was able to take enough academic classes during the day for college prep.</p>
<p>My kids have had lunch that early, more than one semester. And most kids at our HS are done with PE by the end of their sophomore year. Some of them take it during the summer to get it out of the way.</p>
<p>I think my D has lunch earlier than that. She starts school earlier too (which I hate). It’s typical here for kids to be done with PE as sophomores. Only 3 semesters are required, plus a semester of health. </p>
<p>I guessing that the students in the article don’t have every class every day, hence the longer class periods. They only went to 4 classes. </p>
<p>At first, I thought they were going to include what students do after school, as well, and I wish they had. I would have liked to see this teacher who was so exhausted from the school day that they watched TV and then went to bed at 8:30pm then have to go to sports practice or music lessons or whatever these kids do after school. And then have to go home and eat dinner and then do 1+ hour of homework for each of your classes. Hearing what high school kids’ schedules are like is just exhausting to me.</p>
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<p>The teacher said that they have a block schedule at their school, so they have longer periods and not every class meets every day (they likely have alternating schedules where the second half of their classes meet the next day). Many students only have to do PE for a year or two, so I’m not at all surprised that a 12th grader wouldn’t have it in their schedule. The 10th grader may have it on the other day of their schedule or may not have it at all, perhaps because it’s required for only for a year or they completed the requirement another way (by being on a sports team, doing it over the summer, taking a credit for it at some other school, there’s lots of ways to get out of PE–I even knew one student who took an online course to get out of PE!). They’re lunch doesn’t seem that early to me–it’s right in the middle of their school day. When I was in high school, there were some days when we’d have lunch at 12:30 or 12:40pm and I was always starving by the time we got to that time. Many student would eat in class.</p>
<p>What surprises me about their schedule is that they get a fifteen minute passing period. When I was in high school, we had five minute passing periods, and school was spread out in different buildings (rather than all being in one building with multiple floors).</p>
<p>Parents in our district have been trying to change school start times for years.
<a href=“http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2024583851_angelahungelmannopedschoolstarttime20xml.html”>http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2024583851_angelahungelmannopedschoolstarttime20xml.html</a>
Most high schools also have modified block, but not all classes make use of the extended time, in my experience.</p>
<p>We had block scheduling and I think most of us really enjoyed it. You get to spend more time on each subject, so lessons don’t feel as rushed or broken up; most of the teachers would take a 10-15 minute break in the middle of class; and felt much more similar to what we were going to have in college.</p>
<p>We also had what we called “Small Learning Communities” at my school, and the core class teachers only taught for that SLC; so they could coordinate so that large projects/tests/assignments didn’t happen at the same time. They did their best to make it as stress-free for the students as possible.</p>
<p>My last year I had:</p>
<p>Every other day (Blue days)
0 period choir
2nd period Bible as Literature (public school, but taught as an English elective)
4th period choir
left at lunch (11:15)</p>
<p>Every other day (Gold days)
0 period choir
1st period Government/Econ
3rd period Philosophy
lunch
5th period Teacher’s Aide</p>
<p>I enjoyed it.</p>
<p>I didn’t even notice the 15 minutes. I think my D might rather have that than start later. She gets 5 minutes. My HS had 4 minutes between classes. It was a physically smallish school though. </p>
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<p>This is what I thought too. I thought what kid gets to watch TV and go to bed at 8:30? What kid doesn’t have ECs after school and at least 3-4 hours of homework a night?</p>
<p>When my oldest went to college, she came home and told the youngest, “College is great. You have time for lunch. You can talk to your friends. Some days you don’t even have more than a couple of hours or work a day.” </p>
<p>High school is brutal, these days. JMO</p>
<p>Those EC’s are choices people. If you come home at 3:30pm and don’t have EC’s scheduled for hours you could conceivably be in bed by 8:30. </p>
<p>The point of the article is “a SCHOOL day in the life”, not “a full day in the life”. </p>
<p>fair enough, but even without ECs, you could not get your homework done, eat, and watch TV and be in bed by 830. </p>
<p>With 5 hours??? If that’s true, then how do kids who DO have hours of EC’s after school do it? </p>
<p>My D. had sport practice every day, that took over 3 hours. That included many weekends and out of town meets that normally lasted for several days. In a summer, she had 2 / day starting at 10 y o. She would not miss it for a world. In addition, she had to practice piano every day and had private art lessons all thru HS. She also worked / volunteer during her HS summers, but these were not that much.
All of these is really not painful at all. If it is, then drop them ECs, all of them. And I in fact know kids who did that. But then, again, I heard from the relatives that these kids are not connecting well to others and things like that. Well, how the kd develops into well rounded person who connects easily to others and who is successful at academics because she can manage her time, has manged her time since she was 5 y o. These skills are not natural attributes for most. Kids who particiate in a lot, including many activities at school and god forbid that they skip a party, they are getting whole lot in return and grow to be very successful and sensitive to others’ needs, helpful to everybody, accepting individuals.<br>
Nope, D. did not watch much TV in her life, and she actually was shocked how much others at her college were watching TV. They also have special period at school devoted (at least by those who have to manage their time) to homework, again, others may think of it as another social activity and bring all homework home. D. just did her English and History at home, she had to spend enourmous amount of time on these 2, but not much of any others that were done primarily at school.
I also had a rule - no homework was permitted after 10pm, she had to be in bed. If they stay late, their next day is basically ruined, they may not understand that, but parents should.
Again, if she decided to drop every single one of her ECs, I would have no objections, none. HS in fact was a great fun and so was UG that continued to be very busy by her own choice.</p>