Reply to What's wrong with "shift schedules"? (APS)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I went to a large (4,000+ students) high school with shift schedules. From sophomore year onward, my classes began around 7 and ended around noon. The last period was lunch and that wasn't mandatory. Getting up at 5 am wasn't fun but otherwise, I loved it. It made it easy for me get to an after school job, do an extracurricular, and still have plenty of time to do homework.

There's nothing wrong with shift schedules. It's good solution to student overpopulation. 
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What was the schedule like for the afternoon kids? 
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The last classes ended around 4 (I think?) so the overall schedule was pretty normal. There was some overlap between but having a shift schedule definitely helped. There was no opting for an earlier vs later schedule. The student's schedule was determined by what classes they had to take/wanted to take. The guidance counselors worked with the students to make sure that there were no gaps in their schedule. So that each student had 5 (?) continuous periods of classes + one optional period for lunch. Though there were always a couple of people who ended up with gaps because they wanted to take a particular class and it was only offered at a particular time. Those people usually used the extra time to do homework in the library and/or went to a school club.

Basically, the school extended their hours so that more classes being offered. Since some students could take classes earlier, they could leave earlier. As a result, the entire student population was not in the building at the same time. 
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I don't understand.  Now you had to get up at 5:30am, do all your classes, and then come back to school at 4pm if you wanted to do an extracurricular?  That sounds like a recipe for teenagers getting even less sleep than they already do.[/quote]

This isn't complicated. ECs were available starting in the later periods until the evening.  So, different classes and activities/clubs occurred at different times. It was the student's responsibility to figure what they wanted to, when, and also to make trade-offs if necessary.  The majority of the time, this system worked. Now that I think about it, it's sort of like how college students arranged their schedules.

For example, your class schedule starts 7 and ends at 12. There's an EC that you want to do and it's starts at 4. You can choose to do the EC and have a gap in your schedule. Or you can choose to not do that EC and pick one that fits better with your schedule. Or if you really love this EC, then you can choose classes that start later so there would be no gap in your schedule.  [/quote]

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