With high school quickly approaching for Park Forest’s current 8th graders, there are a few changes that may be happening in their 9th grade schedules. The High School is considering changing to a block schedule. This would mean that there would be fewer classes per day but each class would be around 90 minutes long. The days would alternate so you would have certain classes one day and then have different classes the next day.
Having a block schedule has a lot of pros and cons that people need to consider. A good thing about having this would be that students would have more time to complete tests and projects in one class period without having the trouble of having to worry about setting things up or cleaning up at the end of class. It also provides an environment where students can concentrate a lot more because of the long period of time and a lot of homework will be eliminated which takes a lot of stress off of students. One of the best parts is that every student would be able to have a 30 minute lunch period. The information that SCASD provides on their website says that there will be four periods in the day plus a lunch period.
One of the bad parts of this schedule at least from a students perspective is simply the fact that the periods will be a little overwhelmingly long. It’s kind of hard to think about getting through a 90 minute class period especially if you think it’s hard to get through the 40 minute class periods that we have now.
A lot of students do not like the idea of this kind of schedule because of the long class periods. I feel like a lot of kids think that classes will drag on and that there will be more work since theres more time to do it. This could be true depending on the teacher or class but if this schedule is done the correct way I think that it should cut down the amount of out of school work. Hopefully the schedule will make the school day better for everyone, teachers and students.