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Two days a week, but only one day’s worth of class. To us, that’s pointless.
Block days are tiring, boring, and, most importantly, a waste of time. We walk into a block period just to sit there for 40 minutes, take a 10-minute break, and then join back for another 30. It is hard to expect students to stay engaged and focused while listening to a teacher for over an hour.
Student Mahi Bhalla says, “I hate block days because I genuinely cannot focus for that long and I feel like we end up wasting more time doing work that could fit into a normal Scout Day.”
Block days are usually days for activities that can be fun, but then can quickly get old when you finish those activities early and end up sitting in class bored.
It’s 2023; I think it is obvious that all of our attention spans have shortened, and with that being said, block days are exactly what we don’t need.
COVID shortened teenagers’ attention spans, especially from all the technology we were using during quarantine.
Kids sit in class, and after a certain amount of time of hearing a teacher talk, it becomes background noise and staring into space waiting for the clock to turn to the end time of class.
According to CNLD Testing & Therapy, attention spans correlate to age groups. Students from the age of 16 to 18 have an attention span of about 32 to 50 minutes.
Although this statistic may not apply to all high school students, it shows that high school classes should not exceed 50 minutes. 45-minute classes are the perfect length to ensure students will retain the information that is given. Extending the time past 45 minutes only leads to boredom, fatigue, and frustration.
The only enjoyable part of a block day is the later wake-up and longer lunch. But those could be achieved without 120-minute classes. These block days can also be used as testing days. But truly to a majority of the students, those are the only benefits.
Some teachers genuinely do not fill up the time for a full block period and instead, expand the time they take to talk to fill up the period. On block days, the activities that are done can be finished in 45 minutes versus an hour and 20 minutes.
45 minutes ensure that the pace is quick, and there is no time to waste. Students are aware of the time crunch which encourages them to keep themselves on task and focused.
There are other ways to maximize the teachers’ and the students’ times by not extending the duration of the class. Beginning class straight away, tightening up transition time between activities, and removing certain time wasters like passing out the materials are all ways that we can get lots of work done during Scout days.
By removing block days and having Scout days all five days a week, we would technically gain 10 minutes back per period since block periods are an hour and 20 minutes and two Scout periods are an hour and 30 minutes. Classes getting cut back means that lesson plans are limited and kids aren’t learning material that they could.
“I do not like block days based on the fact that if we had scout days every day we would gain back 35 minutes of class time,” said LFHS Economics teacher Steve Clegg.
To remove block days is to ensure that the students at Lake Forest High School are getting the most out of their education and staying engaged in the learning process of their classes.
