York County Teachers Juggle Responsibilities in New Schedule

By Amber Lester Kennedy Monday, December 19, 2011

Helen Riley stood before the York County School Board in October and showed them, with props, what her day is like as a teacher in the hybrid 4X4 schedule at Bruton High School.

She pulled a pile of soft blocks out of a tote bag and for each task, she placed one on top of another, building a tower of responsibilities. She described days of having to sacrifice her planning time to pitch in with PSAT and SOL testing, update her classes’ EdLine pages online and keep track of students, some of whom she sees every day and some she sees every other day. She added block after block until the tower tumbled to the floor.

She said it was confusing to try to adjust to the school’s new schedule this year, which allows teachers to see the same students every day for a semester, while seeing other students on alternating days for the year. In addition, teachers are instructing one extra class a year compared to the previous schedule. “Are we 4x4, are we A/B schedules or can we be just 4X4 or A/B teachers?” she asked the school board.

York High, Bruton High and York River Academy all adapted to a new schedule at the start of the first semester. The hybrid 4x4 schedule allows students to take only four classes a day, for 90 minutes each. Students can take a year’s worth of classes in a semester, which administrators believe helps students who might need to recover credits. Classes that benefit from being year-long, such as International Baccalaureate or Advanced Placement courses, are set up on the A/B schedule, with students taking those classes on alternating days for the entire year.

Principals at York and Bruton both agree the first semester has come with its share of challenges, but they’re making adjustments as they go. One of those adjustments is to work with teachers to make sure they don’t feel like they’re forced to juggle too much.

The most frequently cited concern is that teachers had trouble keeping track of class progress when some classes meet daily and some meet on alternating days. “A lot of them feel like they’re on the hamster wheel, running as fast as they can,” said Bruton Principal Vicky Corlett. “At the end of the school year, I plan to ask them if they feel the same after they’ve taught their courses two times in a row.”

Both Corlett and York High Principal Antonia Fox reported that teachers have benefitted from seeing their students every day. If a lesson plan doesn’t seem to work one day, it can be tweaked the following day, Corlett said.

Lisa Field, a science teacher at York High, said she was able to bond with her students faster than ever before and had more time for review and remediation.

“I enjoy the pace,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been able to cover a little bit more because I see them every day. On the block schedule, I felt like I spent the first 20 minutes of class talking about what we did before.”

Last year, if a student missed two days of her class, she could go an entire week without seeing that student. Now, if her student misses two days, she knows by the middle of the week that she will need to help that student get caught up.

Field said it is hard to keep her classes straight, especially because she teaches two marine science courses – one on the 4X4 schedule and one year-long. “Sometimes it’s hard remembering what I’ve covered,” she said, adding that some of the scheduling has been so complicated, the computer system has rejected students’ course loads, forcing guidance counselors to hand-write schedules.

“I would either like to have all 4X4 or all A/B block, but in the real world, that’s just not going to happen,” she said. “I feel like I have a handle on it now.”

To address teachers’ other concerns, Corlett has held teacher forums. Based on feedback, she revamped duty periods to give teachers more planning time. Now, they have 30 minutes of a 90-minute block to plan. The teachers rotate their monitoring duties, such as hall duty or cafeteria duty, throughout the week so that each teacher only has a duty every third day.

At York High, teachers had more duty periods at the beginning of the year, but scaled back once students were settled into the routine, Fox said. Right now, teachers are rotating duty periods on a schedule they designed. “We are comfortable with the level of supervision we have and that we’ve given teachers as much planning time as possible,” she said.

When the schedule change was first proposed, administrators believed it would present opportunities for struggling students to recover credits. If a student failed a class in the first semester, he or she could take the class again by the second semester. Field said she knew of one instance in which a student who failed a class last year has taken the class again this semester, and will take the second unit next semester. By the fall, he will have caught up to his classmates, she said.

The schools will continue to adjust to the new schedule next year before the York County School Board considers implementing the schedule in the other York County high schools. When the schedule first proposed, Tabb and Grafton High Schools wanted to stick to the existing schedule of seven classes for a full school year. But if the hybrid schools report measurable student success, the administration might revisit the idea of implementing the hybrid schedule district-wide.

“I don’t know that you can measure it in one year, because this first year is really a growing year. After two years of successfully running the program, I can say whether it worked or not,” Corlett said. “So far, it’s been very successful.” Anecdotally, she reports she saw fewer D’s and F’s in the first interim reports than over the same period last year.

Field said she most appreciates having the opportunity to forge closer relationships with her students in a shorter period of time. She said she’s already sad she won’t see some of them next semester. “As a teacher, you have to know that part of your job is to teach, but the other part is the relationship you form with those kids,” she said. “At the end of the day, they’re going to remember how you treated them versus the content of the class.”