User:Ryoungjr2

Richard Young

ECI 301

Chapter 9 Section 4

What Role does Flexible Scheduling Play?

First of all you must know what Flexible Scheduling is and it is a way to make better use of time, space, and staff. There are many different types of flexible scheduling and the three most ordinarily used are block scheduling, rotating scheduling, and dropped scheduling. Block scheduling is taking half your classes in the first half of the school year and the other half of your classes in the rest of the school year, and with block scheduling you would spend about an hour and a half in each class. Rotating scheduling is when the times of each class change each day for example you may have history at 10:00am on Monday, and at 11:00am on Tuesday. Dropped scheduling is where students are scheduled more classes than there are class periods which allows more time for study sessions, clubs, and/or assembles. Most schools started out with traditional scheduling, but lately more and more are switching to more flexible scheduling.

Flexible scheduling is preferred over traditional because it allows teachers more time to teach their classes. Martha Phibbs a former guidance counselor and French teacher at Smithfield High School says, “I prefer block scheduling over traditional as a teacher and as a mother.” She taught with traditional scheduling at first but switched to block and even though she did not know whether it would work she still wanted a change for she did not have that much time to spend with her family at home. “A 2002 report by the Families and Work Institute found that 45 percent of employees say that work and family responsibilities interfere with each other, and 67 percent of working parents say they do not have enough time with their children.” “84 percent of American voters agreed that children are shortchanged when their parents have to work long hours.”  Wrote by Karen Kornbluh of Washington Monthly and that is all employees not just teachers but at least teachers found a way to fix the problem. Flexible scheduling gives teachers twice the amount of time to teach the kids and in Martha Phibbs’ class she noticed an improvement because of the extra time for the children to understand the material and now teachers have the time to where if they want to do an activity they can. Flexible scheduling allows teachers to do less lecturing, which is extremely boring to most kids, and more hands on activities which many kids learn better from because they do the work themselves. Kids get more of a chance to advance in school because of flexible scheduling, because they can enjoy it more because with block scheduling they have more time for an elective which most kids enjoy. Flexible scheduling also relieves much stress from teachers such as: less students everyday, less routine in everyday classes, more in depth lessons and teachers have more time to be creative with their lessons. “In a survey of nominated exemplary middle schools 75 percent of the respondents indicated that flexible scheduling was moderate to well developed at their schools.” This quote is from the National Middle School Association which is all for flexible scheduling because of the increase in student participation and overall grade point averages. Although flexible scheduling is better in many ways it is more difficult as well. Not all teachers like more flexible schedules because not everyone likes change some enjoy routine because it is simple. Both teachers and students are now responsible for understanding the schedule, and for some teachers they may enjoy a routine everyday but with a flexible schedule they will need to be more creative to use the extra time they a re given with their students. Some schools actually allow their teachers to make the schedules for their own classes which would mean much more work and responsibility for that teacher. On the other hand, though these teachers have the power to change the schedule in any way they need to accommodate any school assemble or fieldtrip that may interfere with their classes. The reason that all teachers are here is to teach the students and to do that, you must first get their attention. To get the attention of the students nowadays teachers must be very creative, and with a flexible schedule teachers now have more time to come up with creative ideas and more time in class to implement them. Flexible schedules are great for most but some grades are just too young. Children in kindergarten, primary schools, and even intermediate schools are a little too young to be subject to flexible scheduling because all they know is staying in one class all day and to put the responsibility of going to multiple classes each day is just too much for them to handle. So flexible scheduling is not for everyone but for middle school and high school and college flexible scheduling is needed.

So what role does flexible scheduling play? Flexible scheduling plays a big role in middle schools, high schools, and colleges or universities. Flexible scheduling gives benefits to both teachers and students. Teachers have more time to be creative with their lessons and more time to really explore the subject of the day with the students because with flexible scheduling the class periods are twice as long. Teachers can spend more time at home with their family because they have more time in school during planning sessions to set up lesson plans and grade papers. Students benefit by being introduced to the subject of each class for a longer period of time and hopefully in a more entertaining way and when the lesson is entertaining the students listen more intently and understand more and do better on standards of learning tests. Students also have more time to spend at home with the family because with flexible scheduling they do not take as many classes a day as traditional scheduling which is six to eight classes. With flexible scheduling they only take about four a day and so they have less homework to do at home. So flexible scheduling is beneficial to almost everyone, teachers, students, and parents, and that is why more and more schools are adopting flexible scheduling in some way.

Danner, Adrienne. Telephone interview.2006, September10.

Kornbluh, Karen. “The Joy of Flex.” Washington Monthly Dec. 2005.

National Middle School Association. “Flexible Scheduling.” 1996. 

Phibbs, Martha. Telephone interview.2006, September12.

Romey, Kyle. “Relaxed Intensity.” Journal: Principal Leadership (Middle School Ed.)

Questions 1.	 What are the three most regularly used types of flexible scheduling? a.	Rotating, block, and traditional

b.	Block, dropped, and rotating

c.	Rotating, dropped, traditional

d.	Dropped, block, and AB scheduling 2.  What percent of American employees say that work and family responsibilities interfere with each other? a.	67%

b.	32%

c.	45%

d.	84% 3.  How does flexible scheduling decrease stress for teachers? a.	Less kids

b.	More time to be creative

c.	Less routine

d.	All of the above 4.  What three things does flexible scheduling make more use of? a.	Time, space, and work

b.	Time, staff, and paper

c.	Staff, space, and paper

d.	Space, staff, and time 5.  Who does flexible scheduling not help? a.	Teachers

b.	Councilors

c.	Principals

d.	None of the above

Answers

1.  b

2.  c

3.  d

4.  d

5.  d

Essay Question

Name four ways that flexible scheduling helps teachers?

Side Bar

“Employees shouldn’t need an excuse to get flexible work schedules. Employers should need a reason not to give them.”