We all know the feeling: you’ve been through a long day of your B-day classes, then, to your dismay, you realize that you have to do the exact same thing over again tomorrow. This is only part of the reason I dislike our A/B schedule, in which we have set A and B days on Monday through Thursday but Fridays fluctuate randomly depending on the week.
While there are some advantages of the A/B schedule, such as that they make the A days and B days even over the course of the year and help to keep days off more organized, there are even more disadvantages to it. First of all, the double-B Fridays, which give you a double dose of your B-day classes on Thursday and Fridays, mean that often times you have much less time to study for tests or do your homework. Coupled with the fact that they make you wait upwards of five days to see your A day teachers, it creates a huge problem.
Sophomore Maddie Angle agrees that the frequency of double-B days negatively affects her learning process.
“I have a teacher on a Thursday and then a test the next day,” Angle said. “Usually I would be able to study in class, but at the same time finish that classwork and then also study at home.”
Other McCallum students, however, disagree. Sophomore Annika Katz says there are more benefits to the schedule than drawbacks.
“I’m a fan,” Katz said. “I like having about an hour-and-a-half for each class, because if we had all eight classes in a day, we wouldn’t have enough time to get through everything. I like the having the extra time in the classes I like.”
Though having extra time in your classes is great, I don’t think that what we have right now is the best solution. Sophomore Marisa Goodson agrees with me; she believes the current system has fundamental drawbacks, and some changes need to be made.
“I think it [the schedule] should probably be changed,” Goodson said. “The teachers are like, ‘That’s not the learning way, and you need to learn a little bit each day, otherwise you’ll forget. The drawbacks are if you don’t like your B day class you kinda get a double dosage of it, and sometimes there can be homework that’s due the next day, and you have to hurry up to get it done.”
While some may argue to keep the A/B schedule the same, many students, including me, have trouble because of it. Proponents of the schedule argue that the current system helps ACC Dual Credit students, those participating in student sharing, or ensuring that the pattern of scheduling for the year is consistent. There are better ways to achieve those outcomes. Double B-Days create too many harms: extra homework and tests and falling behind in A-day classes.
Having a C-day on Fridays would be a good compromise. Getting reinforcement on the ideas learned throughout the week would be helpful as well as giving a variety to the schedule. Having eight classes once a week would most likely make it easier on students and make it so the classes the other four days are much more even.
Another possible, if more radical solution, would be to have longer school days, but fewer of them per week. If you have a longer day paired with four days per week, it would be easier for everyone, even the student sharing students. There are even more ways to format the schedule, many of which could benefit the students by giving them more sleep and hopefully, a more consistent schedule.
I don’t agree with the way our schedule is currently formatted. Throughout the school year, there are many aspects of the schedule that place an unfair burden on students. There are a multitude of alternatives, and if enacted, any one of them could help many students with sleep, academic performance and school in general.
[yop_poll id=”6”]
