Warren Central is about to undergo a massive change next school year, moving from its current 7-periods-a-day schedule to a new “block schedule.”
A block schedule breaks up a student’s overall class schedule into two days instead of one, where they would attend longer – but fewer – classes each day. With longer class periods, the hope is that teachers get to engage more with students and not have to rush through lessons. Students also get more time to do work in class instead of having to do a lot of work after.
“A block schedule allows us to not have time constraints and allows us to build a classroom instructional model that allows for reteach, small groups, pull outs, all of those things that we’re not really able to do in the confines of a 49-50-minute class,” Principal Masimba Rusununguko-Taylor said.
The Warren Township Board of Education officially approved the change on Jan. 17 in a unanimous vote.
“I can’t reiterate enough that some type of change has to happen,” Taylor said to the board ahead of the vote.
There are many different types of block schedules that a school can operate on. The approved schedule for Warren Central includes four class periods per day, ranging in time from about 85 to 90 minutes per period.
“The goal is not for teachers to do the same thing in a 49-minute class in a 86-90 minute class but for them to really engage the students,” Taylor said. “The intent is for there to be more hands-on, more projects, more student-led, more opportunities for experiences.”
Some students, like sophomore Kevin Lloyd, said he fears that a block schedule with classes every other day instead of every day could make students’ workload more confusing and overwhelming.
The school hopes to combat this by utilizing the “eighth period” in the block schedule as a Student Resource Time to really focus on helping students stay organized.
Still, Lloyd said it is “pretty sweet” to only have to attend four classes a day.
“I feel like the block schedule can benefit all of us,” he said.
According to Taylor, school officials will learn more from block scheduling once it starts and make changes as needed, but the need to try something different has outweighed the comfort of keeping the same schedule.
“We’re trying to get as creative as we can,” Taylor said. “Right now, we’ve been doing the same thing the same way for almost 100 years … in terms of scheduling.”