Struggles in Learning

This year’s block schedule is leaving students feeling like they aren’t being educated because of the length of every class. An hour and a half is too much time spent in one classroom. While the school board thinks that the new block schedule is better for students, it’s uncertain that more class time is helping. Students may be sitting in a class for an hour and a half, confused because they can’t focus.

As stated in informED, teenagers and young adults’ attention span is less than 30 minutes. While classes have always been longer than that, this year, the school has decided to have block days almost every day, a drastic shift from only having two block days a week. According to Principal Gina Yacovetta, the admin made this decision to have more time for projects, less transitioning between classes, and have the same start and end time every day.

Many students have trouble focusing on academic classes for such a long time, making it harder to motivate students. However, some students like the block days, allowing for more time to get classwork or homework done.

“I can barely focus in a 45 minute class period, so making the classes even longer was no help for me, besides the time in the classes for more work time,” John Vigil said.

Although most students can agree that the classes have gotten too long for them to focus the whole time, they also can’t retain information in between classes.

“I always get so distracted just because I’m sitting there for so long, and then I forget the material the next time I have the class,” Sophie Nichols said.

Students appreciated early releases, as opposed to being at school all day. School ending early was helpful for athletes, giving them time to go home, do homework, or relax before going to practice or other extracurricular activities.

“The new block schedule has hurt my grades. When we were released earlier, I prioritized getting my classwork done quickly and efficiently. I would get to leave faster,” Louie Cordova said.

With more time at school and in the classes, it made students feel lost, uninterested, and unable to focus in class. Students feel like they aren’t the main focus of the changes in the new schedule; this was a change made for staff, not students.

“I feel like the upside of the schedule change was more for the teachers because they get more class time and can do bigger things and teach more lessons,” Mykayla Sheppard said.

It is agreeable that sitting in a class for so long can get uninteresting and boring, because of the lack of focus or even movement to get rejuvenated in classes. With the long classes, lessons, and more requirements to graduate, students aren’t getting the learning they expect and deserve. Students have been taught the same way for many years into schooling education and being use to a certain amount of time to have focus, and then having to adjust to much longer classes makes it difficult to focus and learn more efficiently throughout the day.