Lakota West is bringing back the block schedule for the last two weeks in December. This decision was made to accommodate testing and to give teachers the time to meet with students before the end of the semester.

According to Mr. Brown, this block scheduling will also be used at the end of the third and fourth quarters for the same reason.  However, it will also be a trial for the POSSIBILITY of bringing it back full-time in the future.

Many students who are juniors and sophomores shudder thinking of block scheduling, but they are unfamiliar with how the block was used in the years previous to last school year. Current seniors and many teachers really miss the old modified block schedule.

This is for many reasons.

According to Ms. Zugelter, it is hard to teach a thorough lesson, conduct a seminar,  dive into extensive peer-editing, or give an essay test in just 45 minutes.  Ms. Dunn noted that her AP students will never have the opportunity to take a full-length practice multiple choice exam  Ms. Hofferberth stated that science teachers also want more time in class for labs; some labs need more than 45 minutes to have a good understanding and be able to finish the work. She noted that 45 minutes is more appropriate for a junior high schedule than a senior high school.

Many students and teachers also greatly miss the XH bell that came with the bi-weekly block schedule.

However, bringing the schedule back is not super simple.  According to Ms. Bella, “ It’s not something we can just say, ‘Hey, let’s do this!’ and then it happens. It also creates a lot of work for the technology department to change the schedules in the computer system, so there are a lot of parties involved in this process.”

On December 9th will start our new block schedule and see how it works. If it is successful then we will keep it and if it is not, we will go back to the “junior high” schedule. The head wants what is best for all the students and teachers. They just want the students to learn so if there are ways to increase the number of students learning better/more then they will do it.