Natalie Mayer, Upper School Dean of Academics, and Steph Demko, Associate Director of the Middle School, spent almost six months crafting a brand new schedule for students and faculty hoping to reduce the number of missed classes and keep students engaged in class.

Concerns about missed classes were especially prevalent for athletics early dismissals. The new eight-day schedule creates a rotating system that increases how often classes meet. The shorter class blocks might allow students to focus more in their classes, and teachers can still incorporate longer activities into their 65-minute block, which is now in the middle of the day.

“One of the main drivers of the change was the amount of time students were missing from classes due to sports dismissals…the rotating schedule will limit the amount of time students will miss from any one class,” said Chris Singler, Director of the Upper School. “On the old schedule, classes only met three times a week, and if we had a holiday or snow day, that really impacted the amount of class time teachers and students had.” 

The new schedule was created carefully and there was a lot of research done in the process. Natalie and Steph asked other schools what they were doing, and formed new schedules based on what would work best for Friends Select, incorporating input from teachers and students. “We looked at the issues and we looked at the solutions,” said Natalie. “We just did a lot of interviewing and researching. We probably came up with 12 possibilities.”

There are many ways to help students adjust to the new schedule. In advisories, students had the opportunity to create mini handheld schedules that would be printed to keep easily on hand. The screens in the STEAM building have been changed to display the schedule and day number. “Look at your schedule every Sunday, before Monday, for the week on Blackbaud; also look at it every evening before school the next day,” shared Chris. “Within a few weeks, I imagine that most faculty and students will begin to memorize their schedule and it will feel like second nature.”

Students are welcomed and encouraged to give their feedback or discuss any problems with Natalie and Chris. “I think that any change is hard and we know that,” said Natalie. “We are asking everybody to just give it a little bit of time and then we’ll see if there are any tweaks we might make.”