You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Slava

I think they should push back the start for junior and senior high because I do think that extra sleep would help those kids. But, I feel really bad for parents of young kids with this change. It's just such a mess. I think a better solution would be to extent classes the other 4 days, and maybe add a week of teaching and have every Friday off.

The school schedule is just a mess though. The number of non-instruction days compared to when I was in school is surprising. Back then teachers were concerned that they didn't have time to get through the curriculum, so I can't imagine it's doable now?

And then you have this "dead time" as the holidays approach and summer break where basically nothing gets done. And exam weeks for senior high that eat into classroom time as well. It seems like we had more days in school than what we see now.

I think they should do this just for the sake of Civic Traffic. Stagger it a little!

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Slava

I think they should push back the start for junior and senior high because I do think that extra sleep would help those kids. But, I feel really bad for parents of young kids with this change. It's just such a mess. I think a better solution would be to extent classes the other 4 days, and maybe add a week of teaching and have every Friday off.

The school schedule is just a mess though. The number of non-instruction days compared to when I was in school is surprising. Back then teachers were concerned that they didn't have time to get through the curriculum, so I can't imagine it's doable now?

And then you have this "dead time" as the holidays approach and summer break where basically nothing gets done. And exam weeks for senior high that eat into classroom time as well. It seems like we had more days in school than what we see now.

It’s rare to have two Fridays in a row where the kids go to school. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was a student. So something has changed.

A couple of my daughter’s high school final exams are scheduled during class time for other courses this year. So she’s going to have to miss those classes to writer her finals. She also has had to take one of her options over the lunch hour this semester because the class was oversubscribed. Which means she has missed a bunch of clubs and lunch hour activities.

There seem to be forces at play in making school schedules more challenging and complicated than they were the past. I’d be curious to learn what exactly those forces are.

[Slava]

Yeah I know when I was a student we rarely had days off, or at least that’s how it seemed. Now it seems like every week a short week for one reason or another. It’s just bizarre.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

It’s rare to have two Fridays in a row where the kids go to school. That certainly wasn’t the case when I was a student. So something has changed.

A couple of my daughter’s high school final exams are scheduled during class time for other courses this year. So she’s going to have to miss those classes to writer her finals. She also has had to take one of her options over the lunch hour this semester because the class was oversubscribed. Which means she has missed a bunch of clubs and lunch hour activities.

There seem to be forces at play in making school schedules more challenging and complicated than they were the past. I’d be curious to learn what exactly those forces are.

Being from BC, I'm not super familiar with Alberta education, but looking at a calendar and it looks like Calgary's school years are longer, but have a similar number of instructional days and hours as BC. So Calgary has 16 non-instructional days a year, but BC only has 7 normally. But most of BC has 2-week spring breaks and classes never start until after Labour Day.

Seems like a weird choice to make. You'd think a more compact school year would be more convenient for everyone, as opposed to a longer year with random Fridays off.

[CliffFletcher]

Long summer breaks have proven to hurt retention for students. Especially the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds. Maybe that’s the reasoning?

[Minnie]

Hubby's employer throws a kids Xmas party every year, and sent out a survey in early October, to guage interest & pull numbers. We took our grandson last year and we all had a blast, so we signed up again this year.

Party is next Sunday and do you think we've had word one about where it's at or what time? Nope, despite my calling to enquire a few times since mid-November. I finally messaged the parent company on Facebook and got the place but no one knows what time, which is a bit mind bottling. Massive company, how has this been so poorly organized this year? "Oh, you should have received an email" - well d'uh, but that hasn't happened. So...chop chop, maybe? Because of custody issues with the sperm donor, we plan meticulously for things like this - and last year, we knew 6 weeks in advance. RGMG that it's taken weeks just to get a partial answer. Can I plan next year's party? It will be booked, organized and everything rented or bought by Nov 1.

[blender]

Re the school schedule, my wife literally gave up her career to get a job that she is over-qualified for with the school district so her schedule could match the kids school schedule. It has made all the after-school and pro day childcare a non-issue for us. She doesn't like her job all that much, but life is pretty easy and the summers off are good, too

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Hubby's employer throws a kids Xmas party every year, and sent out a survey in early October, to guage interest & pull numbers. We took our grandson last year and we all had a blast, so we signed up again this year.

Party is next Sunday and do you think we've had word one about where it's at or what time? Nope, despite my calling to enquire a few times since mid-November. I finally messaged the parent company on Facebook and got the place but no one knows what time, which is a bit mind bottling. Massive company, how has this been so poorly organized this year? "Oh, you should have received an email" - well d'uh, but that hasn't happened. So...chop chop, maybe? Because of custody issues with the sperm donor, we plan meticulously for things like this - and last year, we knew 6 weeks in advance. RGMG that it's taken weeks just to get a partial answer. Can I plan next year's party? It will be booked, organized and everything rented or bought by Nov 1.

Sounds like hubby forgot to rsvp and is afraid to admit it.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Long summer breaks have proven to hurt retention for students. Especially the ones from disadvantaged backgrounds. Maybe that’s the reasoning?

Source? I feel like this was discussed here not too long ago and there was no evidence that more 'year-round' schedules showed no measurable benefits (though I'm dubious if the analysis went beyond simple test scores)?

[Minnie]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Sounds like hubby forgot to rsvp and is afraid to admit it.

Nope. The survey comes to his email, we sat at our computer and filled it out together, the evening of the day it hit his email.

Plus, he talked to a few other people today and they haven't been told either. So the eff up is on the company's end.

[Bankai]

Buying a new car and the dealership acting like you tried to murder their family when asking for an additional $1k off.

[Spurs]

I thought this all came up before and like most anecdotal evidence when it comes to teaching and schools it was wrong that we had less school when we were younger?

[surferguy]

I’m sorry but no, there is no way kids go to school more now than when I did.

[wwkayaker]

I looked at the Guide to Education for 1992. Minimum hours of instruction for grades 1-9 was 950 and 10-12 was 1000. Minimum hours for 2023 are the same. As long as I’ve been teaching, operational days max at 200 and instructional days float around 190ish. It seems like kids have less school these days but nothing has changed in the legislated hours/days.

[81MC]

‘Hand made’ #### that isn’t. Like, using your hands to move equipment doesn’t make it ‘hand made’.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by wwkayaker

I looked at the Guide to Education for 1992. Minimum hours of instruction for grades 1-9 was 950 and 10-12 was 1000. Minimum hours for 2023 are the same. As long as I’ve been teaching, operational days max at 200 and instructional days float around 190ish. It seems like kids have less school these days but nothing has changed in the legislated hours/days.

I find this perplexing. I know we didn’t have a fall break and we definitely didn’t have almost every week being a four day week. We also didn’t get as much time during exams (which for high school is a huge difference), let alone these make up days and things like that. Did we just exceed the minimum number of hours back then and now we’re at the minimum? I can’t see how they’re making up the difference.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by 81MC

‘Hand made’ #### that isn’t. Like, using your hands to move equipment doesn’t make it ‘hand made’.

Reminds me of dumb advertising gimmicks like “hand-scooped ice cream” for milk shakes.

[surferguy]

Originally Posted by 81MC

‘Hand made’ #### that isn’t. Like, using your hands to move equipment doesn’t make it ‘hand made’.

I claim my kitchen boards to be handmade. I do use machines to cut the wood, I mean I’m not a beaver. Is this an errant claim on my behalf?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by surferguy

I claim my kitchen boards to be handmade. I do use machines to cut the wood, I mean I’m not a beaver. Is this an errant claim on my behalf?

“Hands”, “wood”, “beaver”. This is a gift to punsters.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Source? I feel like this was discussed here not too long ago and there was no evidence that more 'year-round' schedules showed no measurable benefits (though I'm dubious if the analysis went beyond simple test scores)?

While many parents keep their kids engaged during the long vacation by enrolling their children in summer activities that include summer school, sports and library reading programs, far too many children end up with a summer learning loss as a result of the traditional summer break from school. The average student loses roughly 2.6 months worth of knowledge during the typical three-month summer vacation, according to an article on the National Association for Year Round Education website. As a result, teachers have to spend as many as six weeks getting students ready to learn the new grade-level materials. Of course, teachers could just skip the review, but as the student progresses through the grades, the learning loss will accumulate and the nation’s students will fall even further behind other industrialized countries when it comes to math and science knowledge.

https://resilienteducator.com/classr...ning-gap-real/

A more skeptical article that digs into the data, but still concludes that there’s enough evidence of some learning loss that measures should be taken to combat it:

What have we learned since von Hippel asked in 2019 whether summer learning loss is real? While the story is still pretty mixed in the early grades, we consistently observe average test score drops during the summer in 3rd through 8th grade. However, differences in the magnitude of test score drops across studies imply that we still cannot say with certainty whether summer learning loss is a trivial or serious issue.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/i...family-income/