Switching Schedules: East should stop following the four-day block schedule

You’re sitting in your AP Stats class, glancing at the clock between every problem. It’s only three minutes closer to 12:40 than the last time you checked. You’re tapping your pencil against your notes packet, anxious to finally be released for fifth lunch after the nearly two-hour-long class period.

With the new in-person schedule, every class Monday through Thursday is an hour and a half long, with an additional 15 minutes during third and seventh hour. Teachers rarely spend more than half of that time teaching new material, leaving students with 30 to 45 minutes each day to complete busy work or scroll through Instagram and TikTok — students’ phones shouldn’t be at 5% by the end of the day.

The current schedule — consisting of four block days and one seven-period day — isn’t effective for learning. We should return to our previous schedule of three 7-period, 50-minute days and two block days next year, opposed to the heightened block schedule currently in place. This would allow students to focus and use their in-person class time more effectively.

Sure, having a longer class period allows teachers to teach more material and ensure they’ve covered all the course topics before finals and AP tests. However, sitting through two AP Gov lectures packed into one class period makes our backs ache from sitting and trying to listen for so long. Teaching the lectures separately would break up the class to make the new material more manageable and less overwhelming for students.

A 50-minute class period is just the right amount of time for a class — teachers are able to teach a full lesson and students can stay focused.

When students are sitting in a chair and listening to instruction, their attention span is on average about 10 minutes, according to a study by Tenney School. With this attention span, during a 90-minute lecture about quote integration and essay writing, East students are likely zoned out for almost 90% of the lesson.

Straying away from the four-day block schedule would help students with short attention spans be more engaged in their classes. With the current setup, students are attending each class every other day and being thrown an overwhelming amount of course material to make up for the days they aren’t in class. An alternative schedule would allow for students to more frequently attend each class, while learning a manageable amount of content.

Consistently meeting in classes will not only help students better understand what they’re learning, but also retain it. When teachers lecture for over an hour about Spanish conjugations, students rarely pay attention and never fully remember what they’ve learned when completing the homework that night. By spreading out the lessons across more days, students wouldn’t be as concerned with memorizing information because they’d have a longer period of time to retain what they’ve learned.

While some teachers spend classes cramming as much material into our heads as possible, others can’t seem to fill the time. Whether it be answering a “question of the day” or going on walks outside, it’s clear that teachers are having trouble keeping their students occupied for a full class period. With a shortened schedule, teachers are quick to dive right into their Chemistry lesson plan and maximize the 50-minute class time.

It’s nearly impossible for teachers to prepare a class that will perfectly occupy a 90-minute period, which leads to an excess of free time where students aren’t learning. Additionally, since teachers see their students only three days a week, many have been forced to give tests on Mondays because they can’t wait all the way until Wednesday.

While the idea of a block schedule seems perfect — students don’t have to go to as many classes and teachers can teach more material without interruptions — the schedule ends up hurting both students and teachers in the long run.

When weighing the pros and cons of the current schedule — only having three to four classes, but having to attend each of those for an hour and a half — the answer should be clear. It’s worth it to have seven classes a day, especially if it means not having to listen to three consecutive lectures about Civil Liberties.