Three years ago, while serving as principal of Center Middle School in Kansas City, Missouri, my faculty and I implemented a block schedule. Block-of-time schedules are becoming increasingly common in both high schools and middle schools across the country. In a nationwide survey, Cawelti (1994) found that 39 percent of high schools had fully implemented block schedules or intended to do so by 1994. In fact, all kinds of creative alternatives to traditional six- and seven-period scheduling formats are emerging—Copernican schedules with trimester macro classes (Carroll 1989), four-block semester schedules (Edwards 1993), and eight-block alternating-day schedules (Hackmann 1995), to name a few.
In 1992, the literature on alternative scheduling configurations was not extensive and we made a few mistakes along the way. To borrow a phrase from Getting Reform Right (Fullan and Miles 1992), we learned that “change is a journey, not a blueprint.” To help other teachers and administrators wend their way through the complexities of block scheduling, I offer the following 10 guidelines. They should encourage your faculty to adopt a collaborative approach to school reform.
1. Employ a systems thinking approach. Don't implement a block schedule because it's the latest trend, but because it empowers teachers to rethink and restructure their system. Your faculty may wish to form a study group to read and discuss literature on systems thinking and educational change, such as The Fifth Discipline (Senge 1990) and Change Forces (Fullan 1993).
Discussing schoolwide issues will stimulate teachers to view reform from a systems perspective. For example, our faculty initially proposed blocks of time to minimize the number of passing periods, and thereby reduce discipline problems and improve building climate. We immediately realized, however, that 90-minute blocks would also dramatically affect teaching styles, which would in turn affect building climate in other, more substantive ways. So we began to see climate, teaching methods, and the schedule as interrelated parts of our system. We were not tinkering; we were engaging in purposeful restructuring.
Different schools will have different reasons for considering block scheduling. Faculty at one Michigan high school, for example, identified three goals: (1) to permit students to enroll in one additional class each year, (2) to create larger blocks of time for instruction, and (3) to increase the time available for professional development. The common consideration: What is best for students?
Faculty in another school observed that average students tended to be invisible in the traditional schedule and needed increased teacher attention. High-achieving students, on the other hand, would generally be successful in any schedule, and low-achieving students could receive support from special programs.
2. Secure the support of your superiors. Restructuring may affect areas beyond your faculty's jurisdiction. For example, you may need to add or reduce staff, alter bus schedules, or deviate from negotiated contract agreements. Moreover, because block scheduling is definitely not a business-as-usual approach, you may find yourself challenging longstanding district norms. It is therefore imperative that you first obtain tentative approval from your central office and the board of education. Frequent communication with the central office will eliminate surprises, encourage feedback, and possibly prevent you from wasting countless hours developing a schedule that will not be supported, a sure way to damage delicate staff morale.
3. Understand the change process. Some teachers may agree that a change is best for students, but question whether it is good for themselves. Allow teachers sufficient time to assess how they feel about the new paradigm and to prepare for it. When we first suggested a block schedule, few teachers gave it serious consideration. We proceeded to address all faculty concerns, and within two months the new schedule was approved unanimously.
It is also important to make the change when momentum peaks. If you take too much time deliberating the schedule, staff enthusiasm will start to wane. Faculty members at one high school obtained a grant to study block scheduling and spent three years researching and discussing the approach. When it came time for a vote, the rest of the staff turned the change down. The grantees had made the crucial mistake of talking the issue to death, and, in the process, planting doubts among their most avid supporters.
4. Involve all stakeholders. Building administrators must philosophically support any restructured schedule. Principals have three vital functions in this process: (a) to ensure that all interested parties are involved; (b) to explain the rationale for any change to the school board, central office administration, teachers, parents, and students; and (c) to actively support teachers as they struggle with the demands of changing their instructional methods.
Any changes should be teacher-driven. Teachers must have sufficient opportunity to voice concerns, and must be actively involved in developing the schedule. During the exploratory stages, it may be desirable to form a teachers' committee, keeping the entire faculty informed of the group's progress. Uninvolved, uncommitted, or indifferent teachers have no vested interest in the schedule and may be unwilling to exert the effort required to implement it successfully.
Note, too: Although you should strive for consensus, don't allow a few teachers to stall implementation. Teachers in some disciplines may believe their classes must meet every day of the year; others may simply see no need to change. You should address individual concerns, but not promise special favors to win someone's approval; you may well alienate other faculty members.
Students and parents must be involved as well; an alternative schedule may challenge their idea of the traditional school. Inform them of contemplated changes and solicit their suggestions through parent-teacher conferences, student council and PTA meetings, and school newsletters. When appropriate, invite both parents and students to participate in faculty discussions. Our middle school faculty held an informational session at our PTA open house. Parents not only offered insights the faculty had not considered, but also volunteered to write a letter of support and attend the school board meeting when the schedule was presented for approval.
5. Consult sources outside the school. There are numerous resources you can tap to educate the faculty about scheduling alternatives. Share journal articles and videotapes; attend state and national conferences; invite educators who have implemented block schedules to come and speak candidly about any obstacles they overcame. Also visit other schools with several groups of teachers, selecting the schools carefully to provide a range of scheduling models. Make a point of inviting teachers who are skeptical of the merits of block scheduling. If they return as converts, their enthusiasm may well convert undecided staff members.
6. Brainstorm creative alternatives. Block scheduling allows your school to break away from the conformity of the traditional schedule. Instead of focusing on the event of putting a new schedule in place; pay attention to why you need one. Resist the temptation to simply adopt another school's model; it may be totally inappropriate for you. Your school, for example, may share staff with other buildings. Or, some of your teachers may value time each day for individual study or tutoring, whereas others may prefer a block of time for professional development.
Encourage teachers to “think outside the box,” asking, “What would we like to do that our current schedule does not allow?” Write down the ideas generated, discuss those that have merit, then explore how you can implement them. Remember, it's your program that drives the schedule, not the reverse.
You may consider trying out one or more pilot schedules so that teachers and students can experience the models first-hand. One high school staff did not want to wait until the next academic year and began experimenting with an alternating-day, six-period schedule at the start of the second semester.
7. Examine the budgetary implications. You may or may not need additional funding. The Coalition of Essential Schools (Sizer 1986) recommends maximum teacher loads of 80 pupils and maintains that per-pupil costs should not exceed traditional school costs by more than 10 percent. Copernican schedules (Carroll 1989), on the other hand, decrease average class size by 20 percent, but more or less maintain current funding levels.
Find the right cost-saving solutions and you may well be able to implement block schedules at no additional cost. Under our middle school's new schedule, for example, three-fourths of our faculty taught each period, while one-fourth of the staff was free to plan. This was a major departure from our previous schedule, when only one-seventh of our staff was free each period. Still, we managed to stay within the existing budget. We were not empowered to hire additional faculty, so we adjusted the schedule. We eliminated one low-enrollment elective course and increased class sizes —ally. The principal agreed to supervise in-school suspension during advisory period and also to assist cafeteria aides with cafeteria supervision. This freed up teachers who had supervised the cafeteria at lunch time to be reassigned to the classroom.
8. Plan faculty inservices. Address teachers' anxieties. Prepare for the “implementation dip” that will most likely occur, recognizing that things may briefly get worse before they get better (Fullan with Stiegelbauer 1991). Teachers should be encouraged to rely upon their collective expertise and to collaborate in lesson development. They can take comfort in knowing that within a few months, they will have adjusted to the instructional demands of longer periods.
Encourage teachers to select the topics that they feel will be most helpful to them. For example, our middle school faculty favored the “student as worker” principle of the Coalition of Essential Schools (Sizer 1986), and so redefined our roles to be coaches and facilitators of instruction. With this paradigm shift, teachers actively engaged students in learning and gained training in methods other than straight lectures—cooperative learning, student efficacy, and student use of technology, for example.
Although teachers may express the need for extensive professional development, many agree that the best inservice is simply to jump right in. An evaluation of high schools that had implemented Copernican schedules lent credence to this position. The researchers discovered that the school with the poorest staff development program was actually the most successful at implementing the new schedule, and that, conversely, a school with extensive inservices had the poorest results (Carroll 1994). The fact is, effective teachers already teach creatively, and so should simply be encouraged to continue these innovative approaches. They should be reassured, however, that the administration will support them should they occasionally stumble and thus want to try new teaching strategies.
9. Include an evaluation component. You may use a variety of indicators to evaluate the schedule's effectiveness. Determine these indicators before the schedule is in place so that you can collect baseline data. Building-wide measures include student discipline referrals; attendance data; dropout rates; graduation rates; student enrollment in upper-level courses; grade point averages; standardized test scores; honor roll data; self-esteem indicators; and feedback from surveys of teachers, parents, and students.
Some indicators may show immediate results. For example, in our initial year of implementation, we were pleased to see that discipline referrals dropped more than 60 percent, in-school and out-of-school suspensions declined proportionately, average daily attendance increased from 92 to 94 percent, and surveys confirmed that some 75 percent of the parents and students approved of the new schedule. Student achievement may take a few years to improve significantly, however. In our first year, there was a slight increase in the number of students on the honor roll, and a slight decrease in failing grades, but both gains were —al.
10. Share and celebrate your successes. One unanticipated outcome of our new schedule was that faculty morale declined in the first year. One possible reason was that teachers were working long hours rewriting lesson plans and analyzing how effectively they used new teaching approaches. On the other hand, the overall building climate improved dramatically. We were so involved in the daily struggles of lesson preparation that we failed to take the time to celebrate these positive results.
Teachers can celebrate tangible successes in any number of ways: by reserving time at faculty meetings to share positive classroom experiences, by meeting in large groups to brainstorm creative teaching approaches and share effective lessons, by keeping daily or weekly journals to reflect on their professional growth, or by sharing ongoing evaluations of student progress. Finally, administrators should take advantage of every opportunity to publicly praise the faculty for their hard work, especially during the first year of implementation. All of these activities will foster a culture of collaboration and reflective practice.
