Block scheduling excites students for the next school year

by Jamie Van Dee 

With everyone’s brains ticking with new ideas, we have a new junior high/ high school schedule for the 2011-2012 school year: block scheduling. 

According to Principal Brian Moretz, block scheduling will increase academic time, students will have more time with their teachers, no classes will be split over lunch, and students who go to Grinnell for Iowa Valley Community College classes won’t miss any class time at MHS. Due to some teachers being shared with the elementary, 1^st hour is the regular 45-minute class, and 5^th hour is 55 minutes. Those two classes will be held every day. 

Block classes will be held every other day - like college classes - and they are 85 minutes long. Study hall for high school students will be the advisor time held daily from 12:10 to 12:35 p.m. 

Junior high students will have study hall 5^th period everyday unless they are involved in band or vocal; then they would have study hall every other day. If students are in both, they would not have study hall, but they would have advisor time from 12:35 to 1:00 p.m. daily.  

When upcoming seniors were asked what they thought of block scheduling and if they thought it would be beneficial, their responses were: 

Cami Shaver said, “I’m really excited about it, especially because of all the freedom future seniors will have. I think it will help everyone academically because we will have time to do our work in class and ask our teachers for help.”

“I think block scheduling will give students and teachers more time to get things accomplished with having some classes every other day and some everyday,” said Andrea Farrington.

Garrett VanMaanen said, “I think it will help us in science classes, but in other classes it will be really long and boring. I think it is a good thing but I won’t know until I experience it.” 

Teachers will be training for teaching in block scheduling in August. The training will include a teachers' in-service and Moretz is looking for a person who is familiar with block scheduling to come in and talk about how to teach in a block and what kind of techniques that shoud be used. The goal with the block scheduling is to incorporate more hands-on activities.