Welcome to Second Listen Saturday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share some
fun moments from a past episode for your weekend listening pleasure. Look for new
episodes every Monday through Friday. Today we are complaining about high school schedules.
Now, yeah, Catherine has her own little issue with high school schedules,
but I thought I would start with my issue that I've had with high school
schedules since my kids, you know, started high school and now have subsequently
finished. And that is the start time of high school. They had like
a daily schedule where they went to every class each day. But our schools
here in California, the high school started at seven thirty am and then ended
at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I'm telling you that was just so
hard on everybody involved. Yeah, it was such a bad time. And
I know they say that while even if we were to start school later,
the kids would still go to bad later, but it was inhumane. There
is like scientific evidence that their body clocks just work that way that they they
naturally want to stay up later and wake up later. It's just the way
their brains work at that age. And so yeah, and so like two
years ago, I became involved in kind of this local movement to start school
later. There's actually an organization, I believe it's national. It's called Start
School Later. And so one of my friends created the community branch that we
live in here, and her and I were part of that trying to advocate
to get the schools to start later, because yeah, there's a lot of
medical evidence that says that early start times are not only a risk to the
student themselves, but a risk to others because they're driving to school tired,
they're coming home tired, they're you know, the decision making skills are not
the greatest. So there's a lot of side effects to this type of schedule.
And when we pushed it, when she pushed it, because she did
a lot of the leg works, she found out that the reason for these
this early schedule, at least an our area, was because of busing,
because they had to get around busing, and then the high school sports,
so you know a lot of the sports teams were reliant on certain times of
the day, and it just it just made no sense because there are schools
in other parts of the state don't start that early and still manage to have
all their busting and sports teams coordinate. So it just seemed like it was
a decision that was made by a couple of people and they stuck to it
because you know, maybe it was because they needed daycare. But it just
does not It didn't work, and it didn't work for a lot of It
didn't work for my daughter, it didn't work for my son, it didn't
work for a lot of their friends. I mean, she was exhausted twenty
four seven, and so I have a huge act to grind with the start
times of schools. But you have another issue, right, Catherine, Well,
I mean, I don't know if it's an issue or not yet because
it's brand new for this upcoming school year that they're going to a block schedule
where the kids will have instead of having you know, seven class periods a
day, they'll basically have four long ones every and then it'll be in every
other day schedule where you know, on day one they have these four classes
and on day two they have actually these three classes, plus they are doing
this advisory it's called which is I think kind of like a homeroom type thing,
like it's not a study period. I really don't know what they're gonna
do during that time. So that's one question that I am so yeah,
So I just don't know. I think that there has also been research on
this, and that says that it's good that, you know, teachers like
it that they have more time with their students. They can do work time
as well as like lectures or whatever they're doing. So I don't know.
I'm just I'm I'm keeping an open mind, but I'm curious as to how
it's gonna go. You know, when I look at my kids hands,
like, oh well, this is kind of you know, you automatically have
at least two days to do homework, right because you don't have that class
the next day, So that seems good. And my daughter says that the
teachers have been told that they can't give him twice as much homework because you
have two days to do it, and so I hope that's the case.
I don't know. I mean, Nicole, as a teacher, have you
dealt with this? Have you thought about this? The block scheduling. I
haven't ever been part of it as a teacher, but I was through my
high school years. We had block schedule. That's all I've ever known,
and we always had kind of an open block to catch up and whatnot.
And that's the same thing that I've heard because with my daughter, there's another
high school in town that did block schedule. Her school didn't, and her
friends were able to stay far more on top of their work than what she
did because they had this kind of study hall type thing where they could catch
up on work. And it just seemed like the homework wasn't it wasn't an
every night thing, you know, it alternated. It wasn't you know,
every subject every night for homework. It was a history like every second or
third night type thing. So it just seemed to really it work for It
was helpful for kids who didn't have a lot of time outside of school.
Yeah, they were able to keep up with it inside of school, So
yeah, they really liked it. Well that if that's the case, that
would work well for my son, who is not real good work out that
not the greatest at doing it in school either, I have to say,
But I feel like if everybody's doing it, and if that's the way that
class time is it up, than maybe he'll I don't know. No,
they the people, I mean, they had nothing bad to say about it.
They they were you, it was good. It would have been great.
If Kristin could have had that opportunity. I think it would have worked
for her. And it is more like a university schedule. Yeah, that's
very true. It's a good purp every other day and slightly longer class times.
Is it one that rotates where you start, like you know, period
one, two, three, and then four or five, and then the
next day would be six and then back to one two? Is it that
kind of No, it's day one and day two. So on day one
you have you know, algebra, science, English and okay French, and
then on day two you have choir and history and you know some other thing.
So you have to keep and that I've had experience with, um not
did they not do it lessure at the middle school? They did that some
of the time that my kids were there before. They had the day one
and the day too, and I'd always be like, is it a day
one? Do you need your jim close? Do need your instrument? Yeah?
Stuff, You've got to like write it on the calendar or something so
you haven't joasted to remember, because otherwise it's impractical. Is this hard for
some kids who for whom a longer class session is not necessarily a good thing.
I mean, I think of my auntie boy, and you know,
a regular a regular class is hard, and then you know it's good to
get that period of walking around in between. So well, I think the
idea is not so much lecture for that entire time, but to have the
kids doing some type of follow up activity and then yeah, teacher monitoring,
you know, assessing it time person you know, labor right, Yeah,
I hope that's the way they'll do it, but you never, you never
one account on something being done the way it's supposed to be done. Yeah,
um, yeah, I mean, as with everything else, it's going
to be good for some learners and bad for some learners. And yeah,
you know it's just the ones that for whom the existing thing was bad get
their turn now, right, so and somebody else will be unhappy. Yeah.
You know, if you have that one class that you feel good and
valued in and now you only get in half as often, I don't know,
yeah, but you're yes, yeah, I will think of problems for
a job for my for my daughter it speaking of late started, she got
a free period for the the first class of the day, just for the
first semester. But um, so, you know, I believe it's both
day one and day two that she has the first block free, so she
does not have to go to school. So she gets to start school at
ten o'clock in the morning. Wow, which is crazy. Yeah, yeah,
I wonder it'll be interesting to see if it has If if she has
trouble getting going then I mean, if you start your day doing one thing
and then you have to switch at that particular time to sitting in a classroom
and concentrating, Yeah, that might be a challenge. We'll see, we'll
see what she does. Yeah, she said, maybe I'll exercise, you
know, maybe I'll go to the gym, laughing. Right, maybe I'll
sleep until ten o'clock and then and then be late, would be my concern.
Yeah, I see here that our high school all starts at seven,
actually starts at seven twenty nine. Yeah. So, but there's there's this
thing in New Jersey now where they're going to the state wants to do a
pilot program and have a certain number of schools do a later start, and
no schools are volunteering, so it seems to be a possibility that they won't
be able to get anybody to do it. I don't know if they can
force them, but just amongst the smallish sample of people on Facebook from around
here, it seems like the parents are not real excited at the prospect.
No, because they have to leave early, the commutant to the city.
True, so they need to get their kids. Yeah, I know it
was. It was never that much of a problem for us. But we
live right next door to the school, so we didn't need a lot of
lead time. They could sleep a little l I think in the in the
suburbs where there's commuters parents, because I know, like when I worked as
I worked in um the city, like right in the city, and then
but I lived in the suburbs, and the suburbs our school started forty five
minutes before my job started in teaching, so my son's school started at like
eight fifteen. Yeah, and then when I went to work in the city,
like I drive in and then my our school started at nine where I
work. And I know, I mean the buses, I guess is it
as they do here because they rotate the same buses through the three levels of
schooling. So you have to space you have to space everything out. Well,
you're that thunder rolling outside. The rain is going to come down to.
Oh well, listeners, if you hear the rain and thunder, somebody's
angry about me vicariously three years because it's driving out here. But you know,
they have to if they use the same buses for the high school the
middle schools and the elementary schools, they have to space them out enough,
and so somebody's got to go early and somebody's got to go late. So
the elementary schools start a little bit late. I guess the middle schools get
bus. But to um, yeah, just raise our tax. Jersey doesn't
pay enough to tax this. Come on, Oh my gosh, see our
discussion of my traumatic tax payment from last week. Traumatics. We should call
it a day here so that we don't have to continue tormenting you with that.
I have to get that thought. I have to go get my head in something