What would you want to see changed in Redwood’s bell schedule? Longer lunch breaks and a 9am start? While these extravagant suggestions most likely won’t happen, there is a chance that next year’s schedule will be different than it is now.
A committee of teachers is currently proposing changes to the bell schedule for the 2014-2015 school year in an effort to create a school day that allows more time for student support and teacher collaboration.
Two possible bell schedules have been proposed and will soon be voted on by teachers.
The first proposed bell schedule is a double block schedule. Monday through Thursday would be block days while Friday would remain a seven period day. The block days would have periods in sequential order, 1-2-3-4 and 5-6-7, instead of having even and odd block days the current schedule does.
The second schedule proposal rotates between three different schedules. ‘Week 1’ would be the same as this year’s bell schedule, ‘Week 2’ would be a double block schedule, and the third schedule ‘Week 1W’ would be the same as ‘Week 1’ except Tuesday would be a ‘Wild Card Day’. The outline of this ‘Wild Card Day’ is still being discussed.
“The point of that [rotating schedule] is to put things like collaboration or student support time strategically looking at a whole month of school or a whole semester,” said Lisa Kemp, a social studies teacher and member of the scheduling committee.
The schedule proposals are part of an ongoing effort by the teachers to improve the schedule so that it best supports the students.
“The last couple of years we’ve been working as a teacher leader group trying to facilitate teachers maybe changing the way they teach or sharing more information about kids. We realize that there’s just not enough time in the current schedule,” Kemp said.
Although a new schedule would still have the state required number of instructional minutes, the amount of time per class might change slightly as additional student support time—in the form of an additional SMART period—would potentially take away a few minutes from instructional classes.
“If we switch the way SMART periods are and in the rotating schedule we lose some minutes,” Kemp said.
Kemp described the various challenges and limitations to creating a new schedule.
“We were limited by a lot of things. You have to have a certain amount of instructional minutes… and we were limited kind of on tradition,” Kemp said.
One challenge is part time teachers who are used to having one day off per week or only working mornings, with a rotating schedule that might not always be possible.
Another challenge is creating a schedule that the majority of teachers support.
The entire faculty will eventually vote on whether or not they’d like to implement either of the two proposed schedules. To pass, a new schedule must gain at least two-thirds approval by the staff.
Historically, obtaining a two-thirds approval has been extremely difficult, and therefore there is only a modest likelihood of either of the proposals actually being implemented.
