Reply to The 2 hours delays are the right time to start school!!!

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Reply to "The 2 hours delays are the right time to start school!!!"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Now add 2 hours on to the end of the day and tell me how they feel. Would they be happy getting home from school at 4:30 or 5:30?

Or we keep the shorter day but add on weeks to make up for the 2 hours that we are cutting from the day, so shorter summer.

Which is it?

1) Current schedule
2) Later release time
3) Longer school year but shorter days[/quote]

You are thinking too narrowly. Public schools have a huge amount of wasted, non-learning time during the day. Breaks, transitions, for elementary students there are too many "specials", for older kids free periods. You could easily accomplish the same amount of actual learning in a shorter school day if you tried, with no need to extend the school day or school year.

But people get attached to the idea of "instructional hours" as an essential metric for school quality without thinking critically about how many of those instructional hours actually include instruction. It's so many fewer than you think. Your kids are dragging themselves to school at 7 or 8 am in order to spend half of their school day waiting, walking between classes, or engaged in an independent activity they could easily do at home.[/quote]

I'm not sure how you would get rid of transitions. I do feel strongly that "specials" are important. For some kids there may just be one part of the school week where they feel successful. That might not be math or reading. It could be art, music or PE. I didn't always appreciate this[/quote]

I used to think this way. But, year after year, with a few exceptions, ES specials and teachers have been the most soul crushing, time-wasting part of the day. Poor classroom control, projects that students don’t care about, minute amount of “learning” anything new. Aside from PE, I would vote for eliminating every one of the specials classes in ES. Actually, my ES kids have been thrilled about 2 hour delay so they don’t have to sit through music and art. Not because they don’t like music and art, but because of the type of instruction and environment. That time alone, specials plus transition to and from, is over one hour every single day.[/quote]

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