Today is one of those days where I’m so burnt out I have nothing rattling around in my head. We returned to in-person teaching today, so part of my exhaustion is that I’m “out of shape” for the regular school day, having been teaching from home since mid-November (and on Christmas vacation for the past two weeks). What I liked about online school were the shorter days. My classes would only run to 2:00 p.m., giving me more time to get paperwork and grading done. It was a perfect schedule, and frankly, I wish we ran it for in-person school as well.
I was on a committee last year that recommended our school move to a block schedule (with the possibility of either a later start time or earlier dismissal), but the recommendation was not approved. Teaching virtually last spring and this November/December just reminded me of what could have been, re: block scheduling.
So now we’re back to these grueling days of seven 45-minute classes, from 7:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Full disclosure: I don’t teach the first two periods, so my day technically starts at 9:20 a.m., and even with that extra time, I STILL feel like the days are too long.) I know that some teachers worry that block scheduling will mean a lot of down time in their classes. Math and foreign language teachers, for instance, have a harder time filling those 75 or 90 minutes blocks of time. I get that. But there’s no rule that says each class has to be equal in length. Math classes can be 20 minutes of instruction with another 20 minutes for practice and/or extra help from the teacher. English, History, and Science can be longer, with 20 or 30 minutes of direct teaching followed by 60 minutes to work on projects, do experiments, and read/write/research. I know that in my own work, I’d much rather devote a good chunk of my day to one project or one pursuit, instead of switching every 45 minutes to something totally new.
Anyway, there are lots of ways to structure a school day, and it annoys me that most secondary and elementary educators aren’t trying to be more innovative in this area. Colleges have figured it out pretty well, making classes as long as they need to be. And yes, I understand why colleges have more freedom to do this than say a high school or middle school, but still. We seem stuck in a system that isn’t necessarily the best for learning, but we persist in it because making the change would be too hard or too different. Doing something radical is just, frankly, too radical.
This is all a preamble as to why I don’t have anything good to write about today. I’m too tired to think. Blogging in the evening after putting the kids to bed made sense in the more chillaxing “Christmas vacation” zone, but now that I’m back in the exhausting “in-person school” zone, maybe it’s not such a great time to write. The well is not only dry, it’s cracked and flaking and ready to crumble into dust. Alas!
Despite my brain-fog, I did manage to write these words and post something. The streak continues (for now).
