“ We are looking towards the future of teaching.” said Mr. Stokes. Sometimes A days and B days can get confusing.  We went to Mr. Stokes to find out why we had the block schedule. What we found was pretty interesting.

Some teachers need more time to teach their material. It also depends on the subject that the teacher is teaching, some subjects take more time to learn or teach. While teachers are making a positive effort to adjust to the schedule, sometimes it’s hard for them to plan and adjust their curriculum to the new timing.  In previous years we had LS. LS is a shorter Panther Time. Mr. Stokes said he wanted to “let kids have time to finish their homework and go talk with their teachers” and that if they needed help “they should have the time to do it”. 

On the other hand students like the hands on classes so they appreciate more time in those classes. A poll was taken to find out the percentage of students that like block schedule and the percentage of people who don’t. We gave the poll to a 123 students in each grade and found that 70% of the seventh graders like block schedule and in 8th grade 66% like block schedule. As you can see there is more good feedback than bad but there’s still about 30% of seventh graders and 34% of the eighth graders that don’t like block schedule. Overall we’d say the block schedule is pretty favorable within our school.

We were curious about the history of the block schedule. It turns out the whole thing started back in 1998. The first year Rachel Carson Middle School opened we had a block schedule. In fact, each team had their own schedule. After that year, they changed it to 8 periods a day. The topic of schedule options was discussed on a few occasions over those 16 years. Two years ago they talked about changing back to block schedule. Staff members studied different schedules and shared information with the staff, gathered feedback, and then Mr. Stokes was entrusted to make the decision. By the looks of it, it was a good decision. Mr. Stokes plans to use this schedule in the future. He says that it would take time to see how the block schedule impacts the students and teachers. So far mostly everyone likes Mr. Stokes decision of block schedule. What’s your opinion?