Teachers: If you could set up your own yearly school schedule, what would it be?

Question

This is a somewhat serious (but fun) question. It has to be a schedule that would allow for adequate teaching time, but make the most of what you , as a person, would like in the schedule. Some people erroneously believe that children have summers off for olden days harvest. Would you change this and how? Or not, why?

Answer 1

Personally, I would not make a drastic change. Teachers need an extended amount of time during summer to get the much needed relaxation and get ready for a new fresh batch of students. I think that the time off in summer could be shortened but only by a couple of weeks. I would plug those free weeks elsewhere in the schedule by adding days off during intense parts of the year and more workdays, which are sometimes overtaken by meetings.

Answer 2

I believe the students do not spend enough time in schools. I like to see students go to school year round with 2 week winter and 2 week summer breaks.

Teachers would work in 6 month interval shifts, trading off to a new set of teachers every 6 months. The teachers that are off get to rejuvenate, train and plan for the next 6 months. This will keep the students engaged and out of trouble. Essentially teachers are society's enrichment babysitters.

People who are in other professions that can not understand why teachers need so much time off, need to ask themselves how long they can babysit their own children continuously? Remember most people only see their own children 3-4 hours a day. Teachers are essentially parents to 100+ children for 7-8 hours/day.

Answer 3

I would prefer that the year be arranged a bit differently IF THE SCHOOLS WERE AIR CONDITIONED. Then I would divide the school year into thirds so that students and teachers were there for two out of the three trimesters. There would be a nine month school year with three months off and with one or two weekly vacations during each trimester. This would allow school districts to save millions of dollars in building costs because two thirds of the school population would be in school at any given time lessening the need for building new schools because of over crowding. This may not be perfect, but it is worth a try.

Chow!!

Answer 4

I do believe that our current school year is antiquated.

It does not provide adequate time with the students, and summer vacation is too long, causing serious regression issues for most students.

I would like to see the following:

200 days of school for students rather than 180. That extra four weeks would be invaluable.

Year-round schooling, with ALL schools on the same schedule based on the high school they feed into. That way families won't be fighting conflicting sibling schedules and daycare issues.

200 days would come out to 40 weeks.

The remaining 12 weeks would be split up to provide even breaks between sessions. For example:

1st week of January -- off
2nd week of January through 3rd week of February -- session
4th week of February & 1st week of March-- off
2nd week of March through 3rd week of April -- session
4th week of April & 1st week of May -- off
2nd week of May through 3rd week of June -- session
4th week of June & 1st week of July -- off
2nd week of July through 3rd week of August -- session
4th & 5th week of August -- off
1st week October through 2nd week of November -- session
3rd & 4th week of November -- off
1st week of December through 4th week of December -- session
5th week of December -- off

Just a thought.

It would allow kids to have time off, accomodate family travel plans (2 weeks is plenty of time), while never allowing a long enough gap for serious regression for most students.