(no subject)

[eirias]

Straight from the assmilliner: how we can solve all the education world's problems, including student learning difficulties and low teacher salaries, with nine hour school days.

*pause while I wait for the teachers in my audience to regain their composure*

Just once in this essay I would have liked to see him acknowledge that

A) students (and teachers!) have attention spans, and
B) when teachers ask for "a raise," they are not asking for "three extra hours of work each day, for which you will pay me the same lousy wages I already make."

It's a pretty old editorial that I stumbled upon while taking a break and reading WP archives; otherwise I would totally write to this guy and ask him, as politely as possible, if these things have crossed his mind.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

My husband points out another thing, which is that the nine-hour school day is not going to be experienced by everyone in the same way. You can build in a progression, as students age, toward more independence. Here's how his high school did it:

9th graders: had study hall.
10th graders: could take their study halls as free periods, but had this mammoth term paper to write which took up a lot of that time. (Of course, being their first major term paper, it had all sorts of intermediate deadlines to help them structure their time.)
11th graders: free periods.
12th graders: free periods, some of which they were to use for an independent project of substantial size. (Clearly this is building on the long-term goal skills they have built in their 10th grade term paper.)

The school where I teach, which is K-9, has a similar thing: 7th and 8th graders have to check in to study hall but (unless they are on a list of People Who Aren't Working Hard Enough) can check out to the library or the computer lab. 9th graders don't have to come to study hall at all (unless they are on that list) and can check out to those places or a low-key hangout room.

Basically, within that day, however structured (and I work at a boarding school so the day is *extremely* structured) you can give the students a progression toward more independence and maturity, both in terms of what they are allowed to do with their time and the complexity and independence of the projects they are expected to do.