180 Days

Who would have thunk it? When you really allow ourselves to look how 180 of instruction is spent - we realize there isn't 180 days of actual instruction. I feel this is accurate. Even at a middle school - we don't have mid-terms, but we do spend time on testing, housekeeping - lockers, books, procedures, etc. field trips, assemblies, etc. etc.... I feel that we need to take a better look at some of the ways we currently run our schools to see if we can add more instructional time to the school year. For example, have orientation for students prior to school starting to get the housekeeping items out of the way - handing out books, lockers, etc. After their initial year in a school - this could be eliminated. We can re-evaluate the assemblies and field trips. Are they all worth it? Let's hope. Perhaps giving students time to review on their own, instead of playing review games and reviewing for tests/quizzes a whole period before the test. We can use the internet similar to Blackboard to have student post questions, for the students and teacher to review. Blogging seems to work fine too. Wow. I never really thought that 180 days goes so quickly.