It is 8 a.m. on Monday morning and the first school bell of the day rings. For students in Secaucus High School, this is also the last bell they will hear until school ends at 2:35 p.m., a change from as many as 14 bells that rang in these hallways in previous years.
“We don’t ring bells before and after every class any more,” said Principal Patrick Impreveduto last week, taking note of the many changes that block scheduling brought to the high school this year. “I can say that halls are much quieter thanks to block scheduling.”
When high school started up again in September, students, teacher, administrators and parents all were a little apprehensive. Although they had heard in theory how much block scheduling was supposed to make things better, some had also heard horror stories about how it hadn’t worked. To Impreveduto, the results have been unequivocally positive.
“Block scheduling is the best things that has happened in Secaucus High School in recent years,” he said. “Everybody in this school is on board – even the naysayers and the skeptics.”
Intensive Block Scheduling (IBS) breaks the school day into larger chunks of time than in a standard school day. In place of the 42-minute class, Secaucus High School students now have 85-minute classes – the result of a change to block scheduling approved by the Secaucus Board of Education last January. The hope is that this will allow sufficient time to immerse students in the learning experience while giving teachers more time to develop a variety of teaching methods and plan out lessons.
Although it has become the education fad of the 1990s, IBS is not a new idea. It has formed the foundation of secondary education in Canada since the late 1960s.
Secaucus has adopted what is called a Four By Four form of IBS in which students have four 85-minute classes per day – two in the morning and two in the afternoon. They study four subjects from September to January and four different subjects from February to June instead of taking a subject for 42 minutes a day from September to June.
Even fervent believers in block scheduling such as Principal Impreveduto thought things would take a little getting used to before the new scheduling lived up to its expectations. But the change has been so dramatic, even Impreveduto is a little shocked.
“It’s better than we anticipated,” Impreveduto said. “We expected some wrinkles, but so far we’ve had a smooth transition. I attribute this to preparing the staff and mock block scheduling we did last April and May.”
Keeping them engaged
The theory behind block scheduling, said board members when passing the new program last January, centers on the teacher’s role in the classroom. By creatively shifting emphasis within these 85-minute blocks, teachers can keep students engaged in a subject.
The longer classes, Impreveduto said, create opportunities for informal classroom discussions between students and teachers and between students and students, letting them create a stronger relationship with each other.
“There is more class discussion and a better atmosphere,” said Maria Amato, an 11th grader, last week. “We get to know each other better. We have more classroom activities.”
Impreveduto said the staff started training last January and continued training just before school opened this last September. While he said he would have to give the program six months and then re-evaluate how things worked, the transition went remarkably well.
“We’re riding the crest of a wave right now,” Impreveduto said. “I’m sure we’ll hit bottom at some point, and then come up to a more realistic level.”
Positive effects
Impreveduto said he had expected it to take six weeks for the school to settle into the new program, and then for everything to be working without a hitch by January.
Impreveduto said that scheduling in the 11th grade might have to be “tweaked” in order to accommodate the High School Proficiency tests that are taken in October.
Yet an early survey of students showed a significant number of the kids seemed to think block scheduling helped them perform better in school.
According to Assistant principal Frank Costello, 51 percent of students surveyed felt they were doing better, 13 percent worse, the remaining 34 percent of students did not yet know.
Absentees among students dropped significantly. In September, 1999, the high school had 176 students absent. During the same period this year, only 45 students were absent. This is true of lateness as well. In 1999, 75 students came in late during the first month of school. This year, only 15 students did.
Impreveduto said the demeanor of students in the school seems to have calmed as well. With fewer class changes, students have less opportunity to run around in the halls. Instead of changing class seven or eight times a day, students – under block scheduling – change only three times.
Discipline problems are way down as well, Impreveduto said. Teacher reported only one cut in the first two months of classes.
“Teachers feel that no one wants to miss any work,” Impreveduto said.
While some 12th graders – who previously enjoyed a free period – may grumble a little since under block scheduling no such free period is allowed, this creates less activity in the halls between classes.
Other changes include an expanded lunch, from 30 minutes a day to 42 minutes.
Field trips – as they were once held – may be a thing of the past, although the school has started experimenting with a virtual field trip, something done over the computer.
Homeroom also has been eliminated. Attendance is taken in the first period of the day. First period is slightly longer than the other blocks in order to provide for this.
Traditional report cards have also changed. Instead of four report cards for four marking periods, the school now operates on a basis similar to college, with one mark per semester, or two report cards per year. Progress reports, however, will be issued regularly, and students who are doing poorly are notified more frequently.
How the district avoided problems other schools had
Based on research done, school officials looked at areas that have been a problem for other districts, and developed a system in Secaucus to avoid those concerns. During two years, Impreveduto and others visited as many as 15 schools throughout the state and talked to boards of education, parents, teachers and administrators.
Some schools found themselves forced to split blocks in order to accommodate lunch. In Secaucus, no core classes were structured that way, although music programs were split.
One area Impreveduto cited as a concern of the administrator was the effect block scheduling might have on arts programs. When studying the problems other districts had, arts suffered in some schools.
“We’ve been studying this for over two years and we made a commitment to make sure art didn’t get hurt here,” Impreveduto said. “We built the schedule around the art and music programs.”
Band and chorus have shown increased enrollments this year.
“From what I’m hearing, art teachers were never happier,” Impreveduto said. “They finally got long enough periods for their classes.”
Teachers and students offer positive testimony
Joe Alfano, physical education instructor, has taught for 27 years.
“Block scheduling and physical education work very well together,” he said last week, noting that he liked the idea from the start. “Our problem here is that we had a 42 minute class. While we have a lot of activities, we just had too many kids. For instance, we have four tennis courts. If we had 40 kids in a class, how do we teacher them skills? How do we get them out onto the court to play?”
With 85 minutes, Alfano said, he can “put the physical back in physical ed.,” allowing kids more time to warm up, and giving instructors more time to work on various skills.
“This allows us to get away from throwing out the basketball just to keep them occupied,” he said. “Block scheduling is very conducive to what we do.”
While block scheduling also requires more time in planning, Alfano said the benefits are huge.
Michael Wade, 12th grader, spent his first three years under the old system. According to Impreveduto, Wade’s class, the senior class, was thought to have the hardest time making the change.
But Wade said the change has made things easier for him. He said he only has to worry about four classes instead of the previous eight and can spend more time studying for the tests in those classes. Midterms have been cut in half, time for homework has been doubled, and he feels the change allows him to understand each subject better. Wade said that how classes adapt to the change varies with the teacher. But for the most part, the teacher teaches for a while, and then the class breaks up into small work groups.
Holly Bann, a 10th grader, said she has only two classes under the new block scheduling, and is unaffected by the double time in each class.
“They seem to go by as fast as regular classes,” she said, noting that she was initially apprehensive about whether or not she would be bored.
Eleventh grade student Maria Amato said she loved block scheduling. “I wanted it, even when a lot of other people didn’t,” she said, claiming block scheduling means fewer classes and more time for homework, and allows her to concentrate more on math.
Peggy Jones, a science teacher, is a convert. During initial discussions on whether or not Secaucus high school should shift to the block scheduling, she presented hundreds of pages of research showing problems other school districts had had.
Now, she said, the new scheduling allows her to better schedule lab time, which the old system had not.
“Kids respond better and do their home work,” she said. “Before they had too many classes and would pick and choose which homework they would do.”
She called herself a skeptic who has suddenly become a supporter.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “Now I know there are less absences and we can get more in-depth in subjects.”