Time Enough for Wellness

I’ve never forgotten my visit to Generation Schools years ago. I knew immediately that they were leading the way to next generation schooling based around the needs of our students and our teachers.

I consider their new report a MUST READ! In Cost-Effective Strategies for Extending Learning Time and Expanding Opportunity in K-12 Education, Generation Schools describes how they reconstructed the daily and annual schedule to provide 30% more learning time while keeping annual working time for teachers the same as the traditional model. They’ve embedded time in each day for students to get general support – to help them deal with their overall wellness. They’ve created opportunities for kids who have felt locked out of the labor market to do in-depth career exploration – an absolute necessity for our young men of color. Generation Schools are getting results: In its second school at West High School in Denver, by the end of the first school year of implementation, the ninth graders were seen as high growth under Colorado’s accountability system and “the number of students who were five or more grade levels behind in math and reading was reduced by half, from 80 percent to 40 percent.” That’s why it is seen as a cost-effective strategy.

Generation Schools have six elements:

• A daily schedule with Foundation courses in the morning, Advocacy Groups mid-day, Studio courses in the afternoon and Intensives during the year. Teachers serve in one of three roles - Foundation, Studio and Intensive;
• Staggered teacher time over the year, allowing school to keep running while some teachers take vacation and participate in professional development;
• Integrated curriculum organized into either Humanities or STEM;
• Designated time for professional development and teacher collaboration while students are intensives;
• Redesigned college and career guidance into Intensives for two months each year;
• Support for health and wellness in Advocacy Groups.

Honestly take the time to read the entire report and send it to your local school board, asking them what’s preventing you from unlocking schools from the annual calendar.