Block scheduling in high school

[Misha Schutt]

David Burrous (burrous at csn.org) writes:

>on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays; we have 6 classes of 55 minutes each.
>(ie periods 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are all 55 minutes long on Monday, Tuesday,
>and Fridays.)  On Wednesdays and Thursdays periods are 95 minutes long!
>On Wednesday we meet periods 1, 2, and 3 (each 95 minutes long).
>On Thursday we meet periods 4, 5, and 6 (also 95 minutes long).  ...
>
>We in the department of foreign languages hate this type of schedule;
>especially the block days.  We don't think that it is appropriate for
>beginning language learners.  We would prefer a schedule where we see the
>students every day of the week.

I seem to remember (it was twenty years ago, I may have my details wrong)
that at Indiana University they had a similar arrangement (but you had MWF
classes with hour-long sessions and TTh classes with 90-minute sessions, not
1-2-3 on one day and 4-5-6 the other).  I suppose there was some general
consensus among the departments (yeah, right!) about which courses worked
better with two 90-minute sessions and which with three 60-minute sessions.

Anyway, the first period of every day ran 8:30 - 9:30, then the following
periods ran 9:30 - 10:30 MWF or 9:30 - 11:00 TTh, etc.  The first period was
reserved for certain courses which worked best with daily attention, and all
first-year languages were scheduled in this hour (I don't remember what other
courses were scheduled then--I never took any of them).  This meant, of
course, that you couldn't take Arabic 101 and Chinese 101 simultaneously, but
this may have helped some ambitious students retain their sanity...

I thought that schedule actually worked quite well.  And there are some
indications that a semi-dazed state (such as I experience before 9 a.m.) is
actually beneficial towards the type of non-intellectual brain activity
involved in language acquisition.  Now, all you have to do is convince your
school administration of the wisdom of this variant on their schedule plan...

Misha Schutt
(B.A. Russian, M.A. Linguistics)
ONE Institute/International Gay & Lesbian Archives (Los Angeles)
(day job: Burbank Public Library)