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Plus, thoughts on block scheduling
Another session at last month’s PDS conference that I
found particularly intriguing was the presentation on “Community Building through
Mindfulness” by a ninth-grade English class intern.
What prompted Carissa’s inquiry was her concern about the
level of stress that we know exists in our high school student population,
evidenced in part by the disturbingly high percentage of our students who have
entertained suicidal thoughts at one time or another.
Carissa’s research found that spending a few minutes
at the beginning of each class on some simple yoga and mindfulness exercises
reduced her students’ level of stress, and increased their ability to focus in
class. Perhaps that is not surprising. (But it is useful, thank you!)
What, to me, was somewhat surprising was the degree to
which this also created a greater sense of class cohesion and unity. The ability to develop a sense of community in
the classroom will be an increasingly important attribute of the classroom of
the future. (We make a point of this in
elementary school – why not high school?)
What also struck me – at least in my view – is how
much easier it is to implement this kind of innovation within the new 90-minute
class block schedule.
Which lead me to further speculate: if we were
designing our school structure from scratch, wouldn’t this be the logical thing
to do? Who would design a system of 43-minute classes, at the end of which you
jump up and run to the next class? We
now know from decades of brain research that 1) we need time to process the
information we just received, and 2) the brain needs time to switch gears to
the next task.
Certainly, this is how adults learn. I’ve never been
to an educational conference in which the sessions were not at least 75 minutes
long, with at least a 15-minute break in between. No adult would stand for the
traditional 45-minute class, 5-minute break that is found in the typical high school. Why would we subject our students to that?
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