Starting in the 2024-25 school year, Warren Central High School will be on a block schedule. Approved by the Warren Township School Board on Jan. 10, block scheduling will be a major change to how high school in our district is run. Some major changes include longer classes and not meeting with every class every day.
We believe this is a positive change and that it can have a significant impact on how students learn and how teachers teach. From both perspectives, it will take a lot of getting used to, but it will hopefully end up being a worthwhile change in the end, ideally leading to more engaging lessons for all.
Still, many things need to be taken into consideration for this plan to be effective.
From a student’s standpoint, we believe that it will just be something for students to get used to over time. It is a big risk because the longer time in class could either cause students to be more engaged or more apathetic, which is already a big problem in the school today. For this reason, teachers and school leaders must be even more vigilant when it comes to those students. Students who want to learn should have every opportunity to do so, without having to deal with other students who want to sit around and do nothing. This should be a big focus of the changes that are made.
“As with anything, everything has a positive and a negative,” algebra teacher Jennifer Harris said. “There will be good things and things to be concerned about.”
From a teacher’s perspective, longer classes can cause different departments to rewrite their curriculums, which will be a lot of work. However, these changes could bring a new way of covering certain topics that engage students more than they did before. Teachers should be excited about this change coming because it gives them a new way to try and interact with students.
“I think [block scheduling] will help if teachers really commit to engaging students,” principal Masimba Taylor said.
From the point of view of the school itself, attendance should be a main focus of the change, because if students miss school one day, it will have more of an impact on them, due to them missing more content in their classes. Another way to encourage students to be at school is to make students want to be there, or at least rather be at school than somewhere else. If the school can implement ways to make classes more engaging for students and staff, everybody would turn out happier with what they are doing.
“I am fine with any change that is designed to improve student results,” social studies teacher Nicholas Salemi said. “If the things we are doing right now aren't creating the results we want, then we need to make changes, so I’m willing to try block scheduling.”