School Schedules: Stuck in the Twilight Zone?

President's Corner

THOSE OF US who began watching television when shows were still in black and white or who love reruns from the 1950s and 1960s probably remember “The Twilight Zone.”

Each episode began with Rod Serling’s memorable line: “You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

Contemplating how we use time in schools, I cannot help but think we are forcing our students to journey into the Twilight Zone.

A traditional school schedule moves students through the day with artificial starts and stops that dictate what they see, hear and learn as defined by the period. If it is the math period, we ensure the students’ focus is purely on math concepts and they have enough seat time to “guarantee” they can and will learn every concept presented in that time. When the clock strikes, students must shut off those sights and sounds, and their minds must travel to the history zone where all learning is focused on critical moments in history.

The students continue their zone experience throughout the school day with their minds starting up and shutting down at the sound of each bell.

Connoisseurs of fine television will remember there usually was a lesson to be learned when one traveled to the Twilight Zone, and often that lesson focused on the notion that our perception of how things should operate does not always align with reality or with the desired outcome.

We need to explore a new dimension of reality when it comes to defining time and space for student learning, and we need to test the boundaries of our imagination to do so. When we break learning into silos by subject, we disregard the fact that it is not how we apply learning in life.

The desired outcome of genuine learning is students’ application of the knowledge, skills and dispositions we teach, not the accumulation of facts or skills in isolation. We must treat pace, place, space and passion as the real dimensions of learning and ensure students have ownership and control over their own education.

We must knock down the artificial walls that dictate that learning in any area of study is controlled by a bell system. We cannot define the learning space as a classroom or school building. We cannot assume that students learn only when they spend time in that place called school.

Do you come into work every morning with your day completely scheduled for you? Do you make it through those perfectly scheduled days exactly as planned? If your perfect schedule works perfectly for you every day, your address may be the Twilight Zone.

Year after year, school administrators and their teams dedicate countless hours to ensure perfectly planned daily schedules account for every minute of every day in very defined academic periods. Do those perfectly planned student schedules really use a student’s time in the most effective and efficient way for learning?

I suggest we redefine what an effective student schedule is and then redesign how we deliver instruction through that schedule. We also must re-imagine the possibilities for schedules and the use of time within and outside the school walls. We need to personalize our approach to scheduling learning time and embrace that anytime, anywhere and any place mindset to educating the individual.

“The Twilight Zone” might have been entertaining to watch, but how many of us would have wanted to live there every day? Let’s redefine, redesign and re-imagine our educational systems to meet the needs of each student and rethink the use of time and student schedules.