The eight-day rotation. The Conference period. Lunch at 1 p.m. With all of these changes, what’s next? Specific classes that can’t have homework due on a specific day? The introduction of FLEX periods is an adjustment for teachers and students alike.
Upper School math teacher Sven Carlsson is using his Advanced Precalculus FLEX blocks for not only AP problems, but Fermi problems, as well. The goal of the Fermi problems is “…more of a departure from our normal class and curriculums, more student-directed, sort of fun projects,” Carlsson said. As for his Statistics class, the math teacher wants to use them for group projects and “bigger data-science type projects dealing with bigger questions, where we’re like, ‘Is the crime rate in Chicago really as bad as people say?’ or, ‘How consistent is Starbucks at delivering quality products?’ or, ‘How real is voter suppression?’” Carlsson said.
Upper School Advanced Biology 1 and Anatomy & Physiology teacher Bridget Lesinski is using her FLEX blocks as a normal class. “All in all, I feel like I lost time with the new schedule, so I want to have that time in my elective to get to as many body systems as I can, and then, I feel like the ninth graders sometimes things take longer than I think they will, so it’s nice to have that extra time,” Lesinski said.
Modern World History, America Adrift, and Creating Historical Documentaries teacher Dan Greenstone uses his FLEX blocks as normal classes as well. “I used one in my ninth grade where I met with each kid individually on a presentation they were doing, and I thought that was really useful. I had another situation where I was out of town for a memorial service for a cousin, and what I actually did was I canceled my non-FLEX class and we met up during the FLEX block, so that was useful,” Greenstone said.
Straying away from this approach, Upper School French 2 and 3 teacher Frank Schaldenbrand uses his FLEX blocks as a study hall. “The FLEX blocks, if, for example, if they have questions about an assignment or an essay or a test coming in French, I am here to give them some resources, extra explanations, and practice with them. If they have an assignment at home and want to use me as a resource to review, they can do that…If they don’t have anything to do, I let them use that time for French homework first because I’m here, but after, homework in general. In the morning, during FLEX periods A or E, they can come or they can sleep in,” Schaldenbrand said.
Aside from the schedule itself, the eight-day rotation and FLEX blocks have also imposed workload differences. “I think one-hundred percent for sure if we didn’t teach during FLEX, they’d be losing time. You can add up the minutes yourself. If you use it to teach, they may not be losing much time,” Greenstone said. “It’s possible that we will have to cut back on content. We were told to cut back on content, actually.”
For the science department, it’s a different story. During the 2023-2024 school year, science teachers had every day for their classes. “I think they’re receiving the same amount, and I think they’re getting more out of it because I get to see them six out of the eight days instead of five out of the eight,” said Lesinski. However, Schaldenbrand doesn’t believe that he’s losing class time. “What people need to get used to is to not work in terms of weeks, but in terms of days,” Schaldenbrand said.
“I don’t want to be inflexible about FLEX,” Carlsson said when discussing changes in his FLEX classes. “I do have all of my FLEX periods planned for the semester already, but if students were like, ‘Hey, we actually due to life would really appreciate this time to do XYZ thing,’ I like to think I’d be open to it. But it is meant to be different from a conference or a free period, so it would have to be a discussion.” Carlsson is not the only one open to shifts in schedule. So is Lesinski. “The problem is, I teach a different section, and I work in a team, so we try to stay pretty close together, and our FLEX blocks are not on the same days,” Lesinski said. Greenstone has a contrasting approach. “We would talk about what we were going to do in FLEX before the day-of,” Greenstone said. Schaldenbrand has a similar idea; “…If people say ‘No, I need to do math,’ I will try to accommodate that during the FLEX. Most likely, I think it can be an organic conversation,” Schaldenbrand said.
From regular classes to study halls, each teacher wants to do something different with their time. Overall, FLEX periods will be an adjustment for everyone.
