School Scheduling Options and the Space-Time Continuum

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It’s almost Fall, and the clock is ticking. Talk of time and space is swirling all around us, and confusion is rampant. How does this effect school scheduling options?

Some states aren’t open yet, and others are closing down. In the education biz, it feels like the Wild West out there. Discussions are happening everywhere about how to pull this hybrid learning model off. Some districts are just now getting around to surveying parents. Will it work for parents if we open only two days a week for elementary and two days for middle school? How are we going to do this? It is a tough time to make all these decisions.

There are so many essential conversations out there, like contact tracing. It’s a scary term, but when it comes to health, it gets a little less scary and very important. Some districts are turning to micro-schooling. They are leasing some local retail spaces to put separate, smaller entities in place so the kids are more separated. Maybe this group goes over here, and this group goes over there. So suddenly, the network complications take on a whole new meaning because you’re not just using your buildings.

You might be using multiple buildings you hadn’t used before as part of your extended campus. How are you going to disinfect areas? How about separation and mask-wearing? Different states have different rules; kids under 12 in certain conditions don’t have to wear masks, but all the teachers do. Or maybe classrooms can only house up to 15 kids. And there’s more.

Buses and social distancing add a huge fly in the transportation ointment. How do you keep the kindergarteners apart? They like to run up to each other and hug very hard. We had one superintendent tell us when they put their kindergarteners on zoom meetings together for the first time, they all just got on screen and cried. They were so happy to see each other.

Scheduling options are all over the board nationwide, having to do the four-day week thing or going to A/B schedules, either by grade categories across a week or separate weeks. Some places are using a two-day model. The impact of partial week scheduling on parents is not known yet. There are a lot of places, even during quarantine, that still had to have a place for the first responders to send their kids because they were going to work. So, some of that’s already been happening. Then there’s the question of day-spacing of elementary kids going back first, then middle and then high schoolers, who spend much less time on campus.

There is the idea of homerooms or houses. Like in the Harry Potter world, courting or breaking grades into subunits of grades or subunits of multiple grades. It minimizes contact with the other cohorts, having people come into particular cohorts only through one door and exiting through another door assigned by a doorway. Lindsey Smith, on one of our webinars, shared their planning down to minutes by subject in remote learning. It was very sophisticated work. Kimberly Robinson from Prince George’s County also shared their alternate schedules across the district based on the school. It’s pretty wild stuff. The complexity and repercussions on curriculum and technology are enormous.

We played our Personalized Learning Twister game at our national gathering in Dallas this past year. It is a snapshot of what the future looks like for real hybridization and “uberization” of learning down to the personalized level. The change in structure, space, and time is enormous. When we first presented this, we had no idea that changes would be coming so fast and furiously.

When you look at your schedule options, you think about one essential thing: a school needs to have appeal. You need to have people who want to be there. When you think about options and working parents, the issue is that when both parents work, they need someplace to put their child. They may not have a relative in the same city or anyone they trust. So that’s going to be huge.

These are simply human challenges. The complexity on the tech side has multiplied exponentially. Scheduling access for many combinations and permutations will be a logistical miracle. We still have the challenges of connecting every family with sufficient bandwidth and many devices.

With all these changes, there is only one thing I feel certain about. We can do this. During my seven years conducting on-site regional and national events, I have worked with hundreds of superintendents, state directors, curriculum directors, technology directors, principals, and teacher leaders. On the industry side, the Learning Counsel has gotten to know many of the top companies in EdTech. To a person the people I meet at these events are intelligent, capable, unbelievably passionate, and dedicated. Our challenges are tremendous, and we may not get everything right on the first try. But I am confident that our children are in good hands, and we will come out the other side of this pandemic even stronger than when we entered.

  1. USA TODAY – CDC COVID-19 advice tells schools to wash hands, wear masks, don’t touch. But not when to close
  2. CNN – Can essential child care during Covid-19 offer a model to schools this Fall?

Author

  • Leilani Cauthen

    LeiLani Cauthen is well-versed in the digital learning object universe, software development, the adoption process, school curriculum, and technology coverage models. She is helping define this century’s real change in teaching and learning. Nearly every week, Cauthen is on the road meeting school superintendents and their staff, sharing national research, and helping to ease the burden of the digital transition in education.

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