Ohh, block days, the dreadful block days. Tuesday’s and Wednesdays are a grind, two hours of the same subject. Many students are not fans of this District policy of Block days, but we have to live with them for a little bit longer. But why do we have them? Mrs. Hoodzow seems to think “they do it to give science classes more time in labs” but then again my haven’t had one lab yet this year where we needed the full two hours.

The general vibe I feel and see with a big majority of the students, is they aren’t for block days, now I do come across some groups of students that are in favor for them, but why? Well, talking with some students they believe it helps give them a day off of homework for that class or some also say they like that they have more time in class to get work done. After first hour there is a 30 minute club break where students enjoy the club period to have 30 minutes to themselves and to get homework done. Tuesdays and Wednesdays seem to be more like “snooze days” other than block days. In other words, students sleep a lot on these days so how is this helping their grades and growth in those subjects? Students are allowed to sleep through half of a class and still have an hour of work to be done. How is that productive? Now I would be more of a fan of block days if, emphasized if, teachers found a way of speeding things up. Maybe more interactive work or maybe some different activities. I do think teachers do a pretty good job at containing students and keeping most of the classes engaged but it does come to a point where more students are sleeping than actually learning.

It comes down to this. Is it helping the students,is it improving test scores and do teachers feel the students are understanding the criteria better because of the longer class periods? Now for an average teenager learning a subject would you see them putting more effort into a 1 hour class or a 2 hour class? I think we know that answer. Now not every student wants to be the next Albert Einstein or William Shakespeare. Some just go to school to be with friends and some go to make a career out of something. It’s hard to really determine how long classes should last. But I know for me and some students that learn the way I do, we have to be memorizing our world languages, equations for math, the layers of the earth in science and MLA format in english,I need to see it almost everyday for us to start understanding why we learn these things and how they are useful. “Courses like mathematics, foreign languages, and music may benefit from daily practice…block scheduling can result in gaps of a day or days where students are receiving no reinforcement of instruction in a specific subject like math or history, and critics say this results in retention problems and the need for more remedial review,” this was stated criticism from wikipedia. Block days or no block days they still stink!