For the 2006-2007 school year, Laramie High School moved away from block scheduling to our current scheduling system. In the old system you would have classes 1-4 on one day and 5-8 on the next day, which alternated throughout the week. This meant all of your classes were 90 minutes long. In our current scheduling system we have all classes on Monday, Thursday and Friday, classes one, three, five and seven on Tuesday and two, four, six and eight on Wednesday. On Monday, Thursday and Friday our classes are 50 minutes long with seven minute passing periods and on Tuesday and Wednesday classes are 90 minutes long with ten minute passing periods.

The main benefit to the old system was time, but this leads to several more benefits. When you have more time in class, the teachers aren’t as rushed to make sure they get all the information taught before the bell rings. Teachers also have more time to go over questions, and the students have more in-class time to do projects. In this system students also had more SEBs which gave them more time to catch up in classes that they could be behind in. The negatives to this system were that when students were gone for sports, illness, or some other activity missed only four classes, but got fairly behind because of how much is covered in the 90 minute classes. Another negative is that while students saw their teachers for longer, they saw them less often. Many teachers also argue that students weren’t using their SEBs appropriately.

The main benefit to the current system is frequency. Students are able to see their teachers much more often. This allows them to quickly catch up when they miss a day and the teachers are able to give shorter homework assignments. This scheduling also gives the benefits of having one 90 minute block for all your classes where the teachers can take questions, give quizzes and tests, and teach a large amount of the content for the week. Those who argue against this system would argue that teachers and students are not getting enough time. On all the shorter days the teachers become rushed and sometimes don’t have enough time to teach everything they need to get through that day. This leaves students unprepared for their homework and the teachers behind in their lessons. Also with only one SEB, many students do not have enough time to go see all of their teachers. This makes it difficult for students to make up tests, and get help from their teachers during SEB, because they only have one. So it takes many students a long time to get caught up on their schoolwork if they are behind. It also makes it very easy to get behind when students miss a day of school, because instead of missing only a few classes, they miss seven and are therefore behind in seven classes.

My solution to these problems is to go back to the old schedule. This gives teachers more time to teach and students more time to learn. This new schedule is also much more confusing because students get out at different times on different days and the seven minute passing periods are really weird. I like Tuesdays and Wednesdays better because I feel like I have enough time to actually be productive in class. I do not feel rushed and I feel like I have time to ask questions, and I think many students would agree with me. I know of very few people who are truly in favor of the current scheduling system.