From the appearance of the school, to the rollout of iPads, and now a transition into a new schedule, a lot of changes have been made in the past few years at Fraser High School. On the night of November 11th, the Fraser Board of Education passed the schedule proposal for the upcoming school year of 2014-2015.
“It was exciting to hear about the passed schedule,” Regina Cable, the head of the media center, said.
The Board of education approved the modified block schedule as the committee recommended it. There was a committee of teachers, administrators, parents, and students who worked since May to come up with a schedule that everyone could live with. Being the president of the Fraser Education Association, Cable was asked to select, in addition to herself, six other members who were teachers. The administration then chose seven other members for the committee.
“I feel that the change is a great compromise. We looked at several schedules and the schedules that could have been implemented would have been vastly different than what we have done in the last fifteen years at Fraser,” Cable said. “Block scheduling has become a part of the culture of the Fraser community. That aspect was very important to the parents, important to the students, and very important to the board as well. They wanted to have something that everyone could live with.”
According to Dr. Michael Lonze, the principal of Fraser High School, there were a couple of reasons for the change. One of the reasons was to look at the effectiveness of the block schedule academically. A lot of research has been done regarding block scheduling and it has revealed that the schedule isn’t the most effective to have academically. With the changes made for next year, the school now has a comparison point between a class that meets every day and a class that meets every other day to see how it affects the academic success of its students. The committee put in charge of creating a new schedule looked at several schedules, wanting to find the best fit possible. Many months of preparation and discussion led up to the newly approved schedule.
“What had been proposed to the Board of Education was that we have a first period day that meets every day for forty-five minutes. Then following that is a fifty-minute seminar that meets every day,” Dr. Lonze said. “Then, after that, we fall back to our typical blocked schedule where we will have three ninety-minute class periods; roughly the same amount of classes we have right now, just a little different setup.”
One concern that parents brought up was the change in credits and whether or not the students would still have the opportunity to experience as many classes as they do now. However, there will be no change in credits. This year, students have seven credits, plus seminar, which will remain the same with next year’s changes.
“I believe that the change isn’t as drastic as it was first thought to be,” Cable said.
While students are apprehensive about the new change, one thing students seem excited about is having a seminar class every day. Seminar is a time for students to meet with their teachers, study for classes, do homework, as well as catch up on any work from being absent. The prospect of having seminar each day will give students a reliable time set aside from their busy schedule to get those things done.
“I am really encouraged by having a seminar every day. Seminar will move away from being an event, something that you have twice or three times a week, to something you have every day. You can count on having those fifty minutes. It becomes part of the routine with what we do and I really think that it will change the focus of seminar in a more positive direction,” Cable said.
The prospect of having seminar each day has come with a lot of questions.
“The piece that hasn’t been decided yet is how exactly seminar will work. We currently do not know if the students will have the same seminar teacher each day. We have a committee, Steering, that was a part of how we did business over the last ten years and we kind of moved away from it, but we’re bringing it back,” Cable said. “Those are the decisions that’ll be made in Steering. They’ll decide what seminar is going to look like, how the time will be structured, if a strict structuring at all, or if it’ll be made into an advisory period. Those are all things that’ll be decided at a later time.”
Students have a lot to look forward to in the upcoming school year. The new schedule isn’t too drastic of a change for students already in high school, but it also helps transition middle school students into the life of high school. Whether or not the schedule will be a permanent change will be decided along the way.
“I think the change in the schedule is a nice step. I think it’s a great way, again, to get some good data to see if we’re being most effective in the time that we have and how we’re using it,” Dr. Lonze said. “I think at the same time it might not be the schedule we live with for the next thirty years. We might find out some great things and see where we’re going to go in the future through it. I think we want to continue to evaluate change based on the need of our students and their academic needs.”
