Most students wake up very early in the morning to get to school for their first period. Every day students have a schedule and know what they have to do for that day. It usually consists of them going through eight periods in one day. Last year during remote learning we adopted a new schedule, the block schedule. 

“It made the day feel less rushed and less stressful for students to not have to jump from class to class on Zoom,” Shelly Kish, assistant principal, said. 

During the block schedule last year we would have periods one through four on Mondays and Thursdays and we would have periods five through eight on Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesday we would have all periods to balance the schedule and not have more classes during one week than the other. According to Kish the block schedule could be beneficial for students that have extracurricular activities because they would have more time to do their homework with only having class 3 times a week. 

“A block schedule could be really beneficial because students could stagger the work outside of class,” Clayton Henricksen, AP Human Geography teacher, said.

AP students have a much more difficult workload due to it being a college level course. Students that take several AP classes in a year are given a very large amount of homework each night. A block schedule could help them because they would be given an extra day as opposed to right now having to do everything in one night. 

With these benefits in mind there are reasons why we don’t switch full time to block scheduling. Students would have to pick up another class because with the normal schedule students have a lunch period but with block scheduling a lunch period is built into the schedule which nullifies the need for a lunch period. According to Kish, this would be a staffing issue because teachers would have to learn how to teach a longer class period and with the addition of another period for all students, there would need to be more staff or something of the like which at the moment we do not have.

Some students do not think that block scheduling would be beneficial.

“They are long and tiring.” sophomore Morgan Stanek said. 

Many students think the same with having these very long class periods over zoom, but now it could be different.

“Block scheduling in person could break up to be more engaging than online,” Henrickson said.

There is always going to be an adjustment period with going to new things, with block scheduling if teachers were given enough time to adjust to the new schedule and adapt their classes to be more engaging. Students could have a less stressful schedule which would be more flexible than our current schedule.