<p>Lunch is a mess in our district. My youngest has to finish eating lunch in the bathroom, I just found out Because they can’t finish their lunch in class, and the lines are so long, 20 minutes is not enough.</p>
<p>Lunch starts as early as 10 am, but no later than 12:30 pm. I have heard of schools in NYC with lunch starting earlier than 10 am.</p>
<p>Our HS did it right - you split a half study hall and half lunch, and then if you didn’t finish, you could stay in the lunch room longer. If a kid needed extra time and had second lunch, they could leave study hall early which was great because there would be no line towards the end of the first lunch and they could start eating quicker.</p>
<p>Our kids start at 720 and have 7 period days (no block schedules), with a 20 minute lunch around 1030. For the band kids, who have sectionals after school and then practice until 730 (supposed to be 7 but they’re never ever out on time) two nights a week, then home for dinner and homework, it’s a long day. Throw in football games on Friday nights that don’t get them home until nearly midnight, and frequent weekend rehearsals and competitions, and high school becomes all consuming. No wonder band kids date each other-- they never see anyone else.</p>
<p>And fwiw, no lockers is the norm here, as well. (PE one semester out of four years; study halls died with the dinosaurs.) With five minute passing times my kids don’t have the time to go to a locker. They don’t ever use the school bathrooms either-- no time, even if they weren’t leery of what they’d run across in them. S16 has one class at the edge of campus stuck in the middle of his day; he’s always late getting there and always late to his next class, and the teachers just know: if a class in Building 6 is involved somehow, you have to get used to lateness.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of starting a thread about my own experiences since September as a substitute teacher. I didn’t ask to sub in all K through 12 grades, but right now my district doesn’t have enough subs so tomorrow I could go anywhere. </p>
<p>I did one “team teaching” class where a teacher and I divided the class in half. Ten minutes later the teacher began yelling at a few kids and lost her temper. She said some very mean things to one of them. I could feel the stress coming from her. I had my hands full too and later on in the teachers lounge we talked about the kids.</p>
<p>One day I shadowed a high school student who was challenged, and sat in on every one of his classes. His 1st period was study hall and I thought this was a great idea…kids are half asleep and this gives them time to finish their homework and study for a test too. Teachers use that 1st period as a prep time. Our teachers will split classes into smaller groups, have them use Google Chrome on classroom computers to look up material and watch presentations, and they often finish the class five minutes early so kids can do their homework, talk to each other, or line up and wait for the bell to ring.</p>
<p>Some second graders are rewarded by getting to pick any popular kids dance song on certain internet sites, and they all get up and watch the characters on the giant screen and dance to the music for four or five minutes. The happy looks on their faces is what I’ll remember long after forgetting the name of the problem kid. </p>
<p>I remember the stellar and awful teachers my kids and and tend to have the rest blur. D had a teacher who gave her an “F” in home ec because she was ill with the strep throat when the pillow was due and the teacher wouldn’t return my call about whether I had to leave work to go and get the pillow and turn it in for her or it was OK for her to bring it on Monday when the MD cleared her to return to school. She also had a teacher who accused her of plagiarism because she was stunned by D’s good writing and extensive vocabulary (she later apologized but D was highly offended). D also had a teacher for gifted and talented that made the kids cry EVERY DAY! D begged the principal to allow her to drop out of the class because she found it too upsetting. She had some teachers who really cared about her and were excellent, who helped her keep her perspective.</p>
<p>S had a teacher who was so angry at him for innocently asking questions she couldn’t answer that for 2 years, she pretended he was invisible and refused to call him even when he was the only one with his hand up in class. She also took the class on evening field trips and had no idea where they 12-14 year old kids were (this could be as late as 11 or midnite). He had a teacher who insisted he should be a whiz at creative writing because he had great SAT scores on reading comprehension! </p>
<p>He did have some excellent teachers, though, whom he really enjoyed and still thinks fondly of to this day. One encouraged him and his friends to build a functioning skeleton with just popsicle sticks, string and tape and learn all the bones and everything anatomical. He also had them build planetariums and watch the sky and had S in charge of teaching everyone in the school to use the scanner and had S put together the yearbook for the school, in 6th grade! He had a AP physics teacher for 2 years that would allow him & the other kids to hang out in the classroom when they wanted and fed them–popcorn, pizza and other snacks. The teacher was often tapped to write letters of recommendation and put a LOT of effort into it & his students did VERY well in admissions.</p>
<p>Fascinating article. I agree that what we’re expecting of our kids nowadays is nuts. I will say that I think high school kids have always had to sit and keep still with little opportunity to get up and move around, so I don’t think that’s changed. (Whether it should be changed is another matter.) Elementary schools have definitely cut back on recess and PE, with disastrous results for many kids, but high school I think was always a “sit at your desk and behave” kind of experience.</p>
<p>But the expectation of doing EC’s, which used to be a fun activity for kids but is now presented and felt as a requirement if you expect to attend college, is definitely one more time demand put on our kids. I was recently thinking about how many EC’s I did back in my high school days, and wondering how on earth I managed it, since I hardly ever felt stressed about schoolwork – I didn’t get all A’s like my kids do, because I didn’t feel the same pressure to get an A in every class that they do, but I got mostly A’s with some B’s. And then I realized that it wasn’t just that there wasn’t as much homework assigned back then as nowadays – it was also that the classes weren’t as demanding. History for us was a matter of reading the chapters in the textbook, memorizing the important facts and dates, and taking a test at the end of every chapter (and then a final exam) that was a combination of true-false, multiple choice, and short fill-in-the-blank. My kids’ history classes require them to examine issues in depth, do independent research, write essays, give presentations, and generally put a lot more thought and analysis into it than we were ever required to do. Now, I think this is a good thing – but our kids are trying to fit this intellectually challenging and time-consuming work into the same amount of time that we had back when we were just memorizing the dates of Civil War battles and listing three of the five main causes of WWI.</p>
<p>my high school was a seven class per day school with one lunch period for each kid (they are randomly assigned) and six minute passing periods. (i heard they changed it to ten this year and extended classes from 45 to 50 minutes). My school, however was what many dub as a “bad school” because of the sporadic fights in the hallway. still, there were the people that tried and the people that didn’t try and both of our kinds did not over-stress about school. I am sure that if any teacher started to do that group idea or any of those things, my friends and I would have ended up talking laughing and throwing paper balls at each other instead of doing the “reading”. At least during the lecture we had to keep quiet. We had a couple of teachers and subs we didn’t like, and we would all (all as in more than the majority of the class) would start sneezing or coughing or tapping pencils, or just ignoring the teacher. Teachers suffer, too, and the strategies presented in that article probably only work for schools where there are already kids that are dedicated to doing their work.</p>
<p>My school day is from 8-4:15 with 7 (64 minute) class periods, 25 minute lunch, and 2.5 minute passing period. Then sports practice from 4:30-6:30 and then usually we have to lift weights or we have a different activity to practice after that. Since we live 20 minutes from school, we usually leave around 7:30 in the morning. On most school nights I’m not home till about 8:30 so it’s about a 13 hour day. And I haven’t even eaten supper or done homework yet! Then weekends are filled with games so no rest there either. We don’t have school on Fridays though so that’s a blessing!</p>
<p>I’m a senior in NJ this year and my schedule is much like the one in the article. We have block scheduling so I have each class every othe day. These are my normal days:</p>
<p>A-Day
Block 1- PE( 7:35-8:57)
Block 2- Honors Precalculus (9:01-10:23)
Study Hall (10:27-11:01)
Lunch (11:03-11:39)
Block 3- IB Psych (11:44-1:05)
Block 4- AP Economics (1:09-2:31)</p>
<p>B-Day
Block 1- AP English Literature and Composition( 7:35-8:57)
Block 2- AP European History (9:01-10:23)
Study Hall (10:27-11:01)
Lunch (11:03-11:39)
Block 3- AP Biology(11:44-1:05)
Block 4- Creative Writing (1:09-2:31)</p>
<p>My schedule is about the average schedule for the top 30% of seniosr in my school (course-load wise). We all have alot of sturggles keeping up with all the work and paying attention. When you add in EC’s and homework we are lucky to be in bed by 11pm every single school night starting from September through June. Some teachers have started to recognize how ridiulous the standards are now and do give us breaks during class and try to make it more participatory, but I also have classs where teachers will literally leacture for all 80 minutes. </p>
<p>While my kids have been exposed to more material in their four years of high school, and are far better prepared for the rigors of college, I do believe they have missed out on a lot of what made those teen years fun…late nights after football games (no early morning SAT prep on Saturday!), evenings filled with family dinners, tv and talking on the phone for hours with my bf or BFF, and summer vacations with NO AP homework. 3 months of beach days, summer jobs and hanging out with friends until the wee hours. Sigh…my kids will say they had fun in high school, but I know they mussed out on a more relaxed and care free upbringing…</p>
<p>I am interning at a high school this semester as part of my MS Ed TESOL program, and what strikes me most about the student experience, as opposed to a typical adult work place, is the constant change over which the student has no control.</p>
<p>At the end of each period, they stop whatever it is they were doing, pick up their stuff, and walk for five minutes to a new location where they are asked to do something all but entirely unrelated to whatever it was they were up to just five minutes before. Each class is a separate intellectual (and often physical) entity. If they started to understand a concept in period one on Monday, by the time they get to period one on Tuesday chances are that that understanding has been squashed into a corner by a whole bunch of new stuff. </p>
<p>Why society has come to believe that this is a good way for people to learn, is truly beyond me.</p>
This!,!!!
I did a bunch of activities outside of school. I only discovered that one could list them on college applications after I started filling out college applications in my senior year… My friends and I did these activities because we wanted to… Higher level Scouts or CampFire office, (Eagle, Gold,Wohelo), youth symphony, student council ,hospital volunteer, etc and then met kids from other parts of the state who were into FFA and Grange and other state level leadership roles.
EC s are supposed to be what the kid finds as fun.</p>
<p>ECs were really the absolute reason my kids even went to school for a year or two, for each of them. Different years were kind of eh, but they loved the EC so much it kept them going. On the other hand, I have wondered about this EC thing, in regards to school. </p>
<p>I think ECs are probably a challenge for a kid without that kind of passion for the arts or athletics my kids had. Maybe that kind of kid would be better off with a part time job? Who knows.</p>
<p>One thing is for sure, though, the kids are all day long sitting there, and then they are busy with the ECs. Then, homework. It’s a lot.</p>
<p>But, and I mean this in the best possible way, back when we were in school, parents didn’t push kids into AP classes or ECs at this kind of level either. </p>
<p>I’m a current senior in high school. My school also has block scheduling, so our classes are around 90 minutes. However, my school has a different way of scheduling things. On Mondays and Thursdays we have a 45 minute homeroom between 2nd and 3rd block. On Wednesdays we have a 30 minute late start, during which teachers have department meetings. And on Tuesdays and Fridays, we have a normal schedule with no interruptions. As a student taking multiple AP classes and involved in extracurriculars and a job, I find the extra 45 minutes in homeroom to be extremely helpful. It breaks up the rhthym and allows an extra study period or time to get a headstart on that night’s homework. </p>
<p>I’m currently in 3 AP classes. However, 1 isn’t very time consuming. My AP Calculus AB homework takes up the most of my time. So my hours of homework combined with college and scholarship applications and on some nights, my job, ensures that I won’t get to sleep until about midnight every night. Then, I get to wake up early in the morning so I can make it to school by 7 to either attend a weekly club meeting or get help with my calc homework. </p>
<p>Unlike the school mentioned in this article, we have 8 different lunch periods, each 24 minutes long and in the middle of our 3rd block. This year I got lucky with having first lunch on both days, but in the past I’ve had first lunch one day and eighth lunch the next. So I could either be eating at 10:50 or 12:45. </p>
<p>I’m involved in many ECs, but I didn’t join any because they would look good on college applications. I enjoy being involved and it time allowed, I would join even more clubs. </p>
<p>Having four years of PE is a ridiculous waste of time if the student is already physically active. CT, which is struggling with its education of late, insists on 4 years, with no options of taking it during the summer (as the more studious kids do in MI). If one is in a varsity sport, there should be NO PE requirement. Too many athletes actually get INJURED in gym and then miss valuable time in their varsity sport, affecting scholarships.
Also, colleges are very interested in seeing meaningful ECs and it will hurt you to not have them. Volunteer work is also essential, but, again, in something that is meaningful to you. The biggest question on essays is WHY. </p>
<p>I’m on a block schedule as well, and it includes eight classes total, with four a day. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays we have an “advisory” period, which I find really helpful because it can be used to have club meetings, do homework, or travel to other teachers’ rooms to ask questions. On Thursday, we get out half an hour early. Here are two typical days without those extras:</p>
<p>“A” Day: IB History HL, Teacher’s Assistant (no credit/functions as a study hall), Yearbook, IB Psych SL
“B” Day: IB English HL, IB TOK, IB Math HL, IB Spanish SL</p>
<p>As you can see, my days are incredibly lopsided, which makes my weeks complicated sometimes. However, some of my teachers do a good job getting us up and about. My biggest complaint is just that they don’t realize that not allowing any time to do work in class creates a huge problem later. Plus, I’m not even in a science this year, and most of my classmates are. An hour of homework or more from every class on “B” day plus my sport, plus yearbook coverage, plus my 15 hr/week job forces me to give up sleep. And I’m supposed to volunteer on top?
This year they tried to make it a little easier on the IB students by coordinating due dates so that they didn’t conflict, but to no real avail. This week, I have two IAs, two tests, and an essay due.</p>
<p>The real takeaway I have is that teachers are trying to make school more engaging, but failing to realize that we cannot be fully engaged if we are overworked or sleep-deprived.</p>
Because they can’t finish their lunch in class, and the lines are so long, 20 minutes is not enough.</p>