A year ago, after a flurry of consultant interviews and student input, Parker began using a new schoolwide schedule. Though students have benefited from additions like the Wellness and Club blocks, I’ve come to really doubt the efficacy of this new cycle system. It is certainly a difficult balance to strike: how to balance students’ mental health with proper time for material. However, I think Parker ought to prioritize the latter.
Administrators I’ve asked have told me that instructional time has remained the same, and I feel it would be unfair to write this without trying to investigate my claim. In an effort to be as generous as possible, I will assume no days were skipped in any cycle—due to the conflicts inherent to a K-12 school, this did not end up being the case—making for a total of 20 cycles or 160 in-class days. To fairly calculate the amount of instructional time in the old schedule, I manually counted every day of school to account for holidays, parent-teacher conferences, and other days off.
Let’s begin to count. In the 2023-24 school year, the first semester had 78 days of class, and the second had 79, for a total of 157 class days all year. Classes met four times per week on average, for a total of 126 class periods. With only 50-minute classes, that was a total of 104.67 hours of class time. The current schedule (on average) has six classes per cycle, including flex blocks, for 120 class periods: each class is 55 minutes long, for a total of 110 hours of instruction.
With this math, one could argue for either schedule. The old way had more class meetings, but less actual time; the new schedule has fewer, but about six more hours. I think, however, that the new schedule has an advantage in this calculation: Flex blocks.
Flex blocks are certainly a controversial addition to the new schedule. Flex blocks occupy the same amount of time as a normal period, but with one major difference: homework can not be due. This rule changes what the classroom can accomplish, especially for English and history classes. A Flex period class can’t begin with a discussion about last night’s reading because not everyone will have done it, making Flex blocks extremely difficult to utilize effectively and efficiently.
This year, there is another reason we can’t count Flex blocks. As far as I know, for non-elective, non-advanced classes, Flex blocks are now “student choice”. Now, by necessity, Flex blocks can not be used for instruction without complete class consensus, which seems an unlikely choice. Whether or not a math or science class is deemed “advanced,” they all still have dense technical material to work through, which I believe requires traditional instructional time. No classes, however, will feel this change more than history and English classes, which have no advanced track.
Choosing not to include Flex blocks in our calculations drops the number of class periods to 100 for only 91 hours of instructional time, a 12.5% decrease from the old schedule. In the interest of fairness, some of this time has been re-allocated to changes that have been largely positive, like Wellness blocks and dedicated club time, but discussing the pros and cons of these new additions with class time will need to be saved for a future article.
The reduction is noticeable. Nearly every class I had this year had some topic, assessment, or unit cut because of time constraints. I understand why some people may feel that the quantity of work does not equate with the quality of learning. However, Parker’s purported mission is to prepare its students for higher education—as well as the broader world—while creating leaders and thinkers. The only way to do this is to be in classrooms, learning and collaborating.
Perhaps teachers will adapt to the new schedule, but in the eight years I have been aware of Parker’s Upper School schedule, it has changed considerably at least three different times, so I would feel reluctant to adapt completely to this very different schedule in case it gets reworked again.
In an effort to be fair and thoughtful, I can not imagine the difficulty of coordinating a schedule for 14 grades and hundreds of people. I’m sure discussions are being had about this topic, and I hope plans are being made to address it. Whether that means getting rid of Flex blocks, reimagining Community time, or reducing Conference meetings, I don’t think student mental health and instructional time need to be at odds.
As a broader society, we are entering a moment of increased anti-intellectualism and conservatism, and we should not allow that to permeate our community—intentionally or not. The new schedule’s approach to class time affects the humanities the most—the classes that most develop empathy and an understanding of the world. Humanities classes are also the ones we are seeing attacked around the country because they highlight current events and injustices.
Morning Ex’s have also been reduced significantly within the new schedule— Parker once had time to invite many new voices to the school. Now, however, we must be more selective with the whittled down MX time, as many MXs are already allocated to circular presentations, speakers invited through grants, or school traditions. That means developing empathy and a broader understanding of the world in the classroom is even more important than before.
As a student body, we should not be excited by an opportunity to discuss less and develop less empathy. A progressive institution should encourage progressive thinkers to learn more, not less. I hope that we can consider how to make sure we stay in the classroom: learning, growing, and thinking.
