180 Days

I agree with a lot of the points made by Professor Bachenheimer on his Utube video about 180 days of high school. A lot of time is wasted during the course of the school year for non educational and/or instructional activities. Of course the point can also be made that there are other purposes to school, like fostering development in the areas of socialization and communication. Things like pep rallies, guidance planning, and parties allow students to further develop these skills. Additionally, movies, assemblies, and review sessions can be academic in nature and often help to engage different types of learners in the material being presented. The ultimate message to teachers is to be aware of the precious time that we have with our students and to use this time to the fullest possibility.

I'm sure that studies have been done about how we compare to other countries in this area. I'm not aware of the findings, but I would guess that many other nations (with high academic ratings) do not spend as much time occupied with non academic events during the school day as compared to us in the USA. It seems to me that our American society expects the schools to be responsible for things that might fall to families and parents in other nations. Examples include hosting birthday celebrations, providing review and study periods, taking individual photos, providing counseling, and having assembly programs to expose students to culture and art. All of these things are important in the development of a child. But when the school provides these lessons, some academic time suffers. Schools and teachers might have more time for teaching, if families did some of these non academic activities at home.

One final idea that I kept thinking about during this video is the fact that self contained teachers in elementary schools have more time for instruction because they have their students all day. So, even if there is an assembly, party, or fire drill, the most important information can still be taught and learned during the day. It might help to combat this problem, if subjects were taught for an entire half of the day at the middle and high school level. Students could still complete the same number of courses over the course of a year - they would just finish them more quickly and move on to the next one. By having a longer period of time, teachers would be able to prioritize the information and make sure students still learn essential things on days when the schedule has interruptions. (I think I may have inadvertently just agreed with one of Marc Prensky's points. It may be possible to teach the curriculum in less than an entire school year, if we are willing to change some of the ways in which we schedule the day.)