St. Paul Public Schools will move to block scheduling at all high schools next fall, with each student taking four classes one day and four different classes the next.
The change will cut down on the number of transitions in hallways, where behavior problems often arise.
It also will give students more opportunities to take elective courses and should be good for instruction, officials say.
“The transitions are rough for students and for teachers,” said Robyn Asher, a biology teacher who serves on a district work group that recommended the move; she’s taken a new position with the district to coordinate the schedule change.
Asher said her classes recently stretched out a dissection lab over three days because of the time it takes to set up and put away materials. The longer class periods — 79 minutes as opposed to 44 — will make those labs easier to manage and help teachers connect with their students, she said.
District high schools experimented with block schedules last spring when students returned to their schools after a long period of distance learning, as coronavirus cases waned and vaccines were offered to teachers. District surveys showed both students and teachers preferred it.
Seven-period days have always been stressful for students, college and career readiness director Darren Ginther said, and “it was just extremely amplified during the pandemic.”
This fall, Washington, Humboldt and Open World Learning still are on block schedules, while the others have seven periods each day.
School board member Jim Vue said his son is a freshman at OWL this year and the block schedule is helping him pace his work.
Board member Chauntyll Allen said there’s a lot to like about block scheduling. “The less transitions, the less chaos,” she said.
With everyone on the same daily schedule, it will be possible for teachers in low-enrolled classes to teach students from multiple schools online at the same time. Students also will have less trouble transferring between schools.
With block scheduling, students will be in class for eight more minutes each day. However, by moving from seven classes to eight, the amount of time spent in each individual class will decrease by 10 percent.
The district will train teachers for the longer class periods in the spring and summer.
Block scheduling isn’t the only lasting change for high schools to come out of the pandemic. The district also is making it easier and more convenient for students to recover lost credits. And it’s made grading changes that focus on whether students master the material before the semester ends, not on how they performed along the way.