Sonoma County students, educators debate later start to high school days | The Press Democrat

2013-09-06T05:54:00.000-07:00

Sonoma County students, educators debate later start to high school days | The Press Democrat:

"Terry Zavala says fatigue is a near-constant for a busy high school student and it affects her in different ways throughout her day.

“In the morning it gets a little bit hard because you are still in a groggy state,” the Santa Rosa High School junior said of her 8 a.m. class start. “But I think I'm more tired at the end of the day.”"

This comes as a result of an excellent post from a FB friend who is also a college professor, a dad, and all-round-decent human being.

Click the link, then this my rant on flexibility-for what it is worth:
I speak from my own experience: I got to go to one of the best high schools in the country-but, as a night person, getting up at 5:30-6:00 am every day was brutal. However, the school, knowing this happened with kids coming from a distance (and knowing teenagers), made allowances of-sorts. Morning periods rotated. The idea was so that you wouldn't be always in the same class at 8am every day. It worked-even for me. And for Jr.s and Sr.s who weren't on the "D&F List" (meaning no Ds or Fs), if you had a study-hall in the morning, if it came up as first period class on a given day you got to come to school late if you chose. In addition, we had short periods (42 mins). We were done at EXACTLY 1:32pm every day. More homework? Yes-but we already had a ton. Kids who had sports, or a job, or a hellacious commute got an extra 1:30 daily beyond other local schools to get things done or get where they needed to be. We sent middle-class and lower-middle-class kids to Ivy League Schools, West Point, and the Air Force Academy. We may have been a private school, but we were cheap. I recently priced a similar private school in LA compared to my old HS and the LA school was charging 3 times as much as my alma-mater is now-with the same number of foreign students, a larger class-size and fewer sports and activities. We might have been a 'Prep School' but most of our teachers got paid less than public-school teachers. Now they have scholarships-academic and sports..and need-based. Our band (after I graduated) played at several presidential inaugurations.

In Jr. College at Mesa Community College in Mesa, AZ the schedules for all classes in ALL majors was broken up into AM, afternoon, or night. You could choose when you wanted to schedule your classes. ALL one schedule-or a mix-and-match of the three. Afternoon classes were actually cheaper because there was less demand.
In addition to personally saving hundreds of dollars (potentially thousands for out of state students) for taking the afternoon classes over the course of time-it allowed students to set a schedule that allowed for work, sleep, and study. This on a campus that was mostly 1-story buildings, with small classrooms on a campus RIDICULOUSLY small considering they had over 30,000 students in the early 90s.
This schedule also worked to ensure they had a faculty (especially in professional fields like accounting, psychology, and nursing) who could teach and work in their field. In early 2001 I had a Geology 101 class and my teacher AND her husband were both working on a Mars-probe mission for NASA at neighboring ASU. They were involved in this to the degree that their names were on the plaque on the side of the probe.
I think thatclas cost $111.00.
My psych 101 teacher was was practicing clinical psychologist who INSISTED on using the same text as Pysch 101 at Harvard.
In a sophomore math class I had a fellow student who had dropped out of the Engineering School at Pitt to help take care of a sick relative in AZ-he stood up in class and told our teacher that, because of the small-size of the class he had to work TWICE as hard to get the same grades as at Pitt.
My vote is for flexibility. I think it goes FAR beyond the concepts mentioned. I think it helps draw and retain students and staff. I also think it begins to instill the concept of time, time management, and how you want to use your time in the future.

'via Blog this'

Miscellaneous Debris

Sonoma County students, educators debate later start to high school days | The Press Democrat