Yesterday I talked about characteristics of the current school year that hinder school change. Today I want to suggest two complimentary possible solutions that could be implemented fairly easily.
As I mentioned yesterday, the key problem is the lack of time between the start of the year and the tractor-beam pull of the holidays beginning early in October. One way to fix this would be putting more time at the beginning of the year. Many secondary schools are currently experimenting with early to mid August starting dates in order to line up semesters with the Christmas break. Though I see some challenges to conducting final exams in the middle of the most mind-numbing time of the year, I will be very interested in seeing whether these schools are able to accomplish more in the extra two to three weeks.
I do know that there are challenges in making a change like this, but I think we don’t face and answer them because there is a dangerous assumption that the school year as we have it now is working. As I say with many challenges, if we wanted to do it, we would do it.
OK, that’s half. The other half would be adding a few half days on to the traditional 180 and putting the bulk of full day and part day inservice time available into the first month and a half. If I had only one month to teach a skill, I would make all the instruction time available during that month. If the school calendar reflected that same sense of urgency, “We’ve got two months to get this done,” schools could build specific tasks into this time and have specific outcomes at the end.
By adding both days and time before the holiday malaise, schools could develop faculty on a consistent yearly path. No more “next year”!
As always I welcome your comments.
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.