In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Director of Academic Information Systems Paul Mlakar and the school’s administration redoubled their efforts to reshape a traditional schedule into the current eight-day rotation.
For years, school administrators floated the idea of a schedule that would enhance the balance in students’ lives. They started looking into scheduling options and weighing those against the school’s current schedule.
As more studies emerge about students’ attention spans and “work-life” balance, schools all over the country are adjusting in various ways. Whether it’s light tweaking of day-to-day schedules or an extreme shift to a 4-day week, the question of what schedule works the best remains among educators.
The school, however, seems to have found a mix that works well for Marksmen.
“It was part of our goals for St. Mark’s to try to come up with a new daily schedule that could really improve the life of the boys, try to give them more flexibility, try to give us more flexibility (and) try to reduce the load on the boys, which we’re able to do with this new schedule,” Mlakar said.
The former schedule, which was broken into three trimesters, consisted of a five-day rotation to align with the five days of the week. Each Middle Schooler took the same eight classes every day from 8:00 a.m. to 3:55 p.m. However, with the schedule change, the school year was now broken into semesters. Students also had six classes each day from 8:30 a.m. to 3:25 p.m. on an eight-day rotation, allowing for more variability. With the changes, one hour was shaved off the schedule.
Following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, students grew to love the new schedule.
“The student body was either in the positive or the strong positive that the new schedule was so much better for them than our old schedule was,” Mlakar said. “That was very satisfying and (rewarding) for all the work that we put into coming up with this new schedule.”
With classes meeting every day under the old schedule, students could expect huge homework loads every night. With the new schedule, however, students not only have fewer classes but also less homework each day.
“When we implemented the new schedule, the faculty already had a policy about how much homework you could give per week, and we maintain that standard,” Mlakar said. “So it really has helped with the workload for some students and cut that back for them.”
Moving from a long-standing schedule required adaptations from faculty members in reshaping the curriculum to accommodate less class time overall.
“We had to take a look and ask, ‘how do we go from seeing kids every day to seeing kids just every three out of four days?’ How do we continue to teach all the topics and to go as deep as we want to do that? What was two 45 minute class times, now we have to somehow accommodate in a 70 minute class. Every department had to do that and take a look at their curriculum on how to adjust it,” Mlakar said.
Attention spans have dropped across the country to nearly a third since 2004 due to factors like social media. Because of this, teachers may adapt the class time itself to allow for breaks.
“Long classes are not great for lower schoolers, because realistically their brains are not able to sustain attention for that amount of time,” Director of Marksman Wellness Center Gabby Reed said. “Even in middle school, the 70 minute periods are best when the teacher allows for a brain break in the middle, just because, from a human perspective, it’s hard for us to pay attention for longer than 25 minutes frankly.”
Even though attention spans have shrunk over the years, faculty members still value the long period block.
“In my Health & Wellness class, it gives me the chance to show videos that I wouldn’t get to do. I can show reform videos, we can have (better) discussions,” Reed said. “If there’s a group project in humanities, you can actually be (doing) hands-on things.”
In order to make the most of an education, sacrifices to scheduling structure have to be made. While it’s not ideal, the balance is important.
“I think adolescent brains would love a nine o’clock starter. Adolescent brains like to sleep in, and they like to go to bed late,” Reed said. “I thought it was a huge improvement that we gained that 30 minutes. I don’t see us ever moving to a later start time just because it pushes everything back in the day, basically. But this is better for teenagers, for sure.”
As the new schedule has run its course, students and faculty members have adapted, some not even having been at the school to experience the previous schedule. Despite slight imperfections, Mlakar doesn’t see any major reason for why the schedule would need to change any time in the near future.
“There’s no perfect schedule for any school. Every school would love to have a tweak here or there. I wish our middle school students had more time for clubs,” Mlakar said. “But we’re doing the best we can with that.”
