Teachers study schedule change

Citrus High's faculty goes back to school for tips on mastering the new four-by-four schedule.

By JORGE SANCHEZ AND BARBARA BEHRENDT

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 5, 2000

INVERNESS -- Teachers at Citrus High learned some techniques to help them prepare for the new class schedule they will face when school restarts in August.

When most other teachers in the county were enjoying the first weekend of summer vacation, about 35 Citrus High teachers went back to school once again Saturday -- to learn rather than to teach.

Saturday's three-hour workshop hosted by Sharen Lewis from the University of South Florida culminated months of preparation to start the four-by-four block schedule in August.

Lewis is a teacher at Venice Area Middle School and is also an education consultant for the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Teacher Leigh Ann Bradshaw said the speaker was scheduled to provide that last motivational push as teachers left for their summer vacation last week. "We wanted them to take that focus with them into the summer on curriculum planning," she said.

The four-by-four schedule means that students take fewer but longer classes each day, giving them the chance to earn extra credits and giving teachers the chance to try new approaches to teaching with longer class periods. Under the new plan, there would be four classes a day, as opposed to this year's seven-period day.

A full credit class would be finished in half the school year. A half-credit class would be done in just nine weeks.

"If you have control of your class and practice fair discipline, you will not have any problems with block scheduling," Lewis told teachers at the workshop.

She demonstrated ways of splitting a 90-minute block class into quarters, with time for lectures, group and individual work.

Citrus High English teacher Georgana Abele said she was a big supporter of the block schedule.

"It enhances the students' ability to learn, and you get to know the students better," she said.

Abele, who has been at Citrus High 14 years, said she wasn't worried about keeping students interested during the longer sessions.

"I taught three- and four-hour blocks at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, and it wasn't a problem."

The teachers were shown several techniques during the workshop to help them present material more effectively in the block schedule format. Lewis said that by dividing the block schedule into quarters of about 20 minutes each, students won't lose interest.

After participating in a county committee charged with finding ways to get all three county high schools on a common schedule, Citrus High principal Gary Foltz decided in December that the time had come to switch to the block schedule. Crystal River and Lecanto have used the four-by-four schedule for several years.

"There was a lot of good information here," Foltz said Saturday after the workshop.

Some faculty and parents opposed the plan, but the School Board held a public hearing to air those concerns several months ago. Preparations to start the new schedule have been on track ever since.

CHS faculty have both hosted visits from faculty at the other block-scheduled schools and have traveled to several schools inside and outside the county that use the block schedule. There have also been training opportunities for teachers, and the school is paying teachers to spend between 10 and 40 hours this summer working on their curriculum plan for next school year.

"Parents were concerned about how all of this was going to work," Bradshaw said. "We've been working on developing training strategies, doing curriculum planning during school and sharing block-schedule teaching strategies," she said.

Bradshaw said teachers, even those who might have been reluctant to change, have come around to working toward the new kind of curriculum they must develop. Classes will now stretch to an hour and a half, 50 percent longer than current classes. And with the average teenage attention span just 20 minutes, Bradshaw said everyone understood the need to find more hands-on, activity-related lessons.

"We wanted to make sure that everyone's curriculum is up to date," she said. "I'm real pleased at the level of involvement from our faculty."

Bradshaw will have the chance to continue working with teachers in the new school year. She will still teach business classes, but one period a day she will also work with other teachers on curriculum. As a business teacher, she said she plans to incorporate new technology into that training, and she will spend her summer at the school helping teachers as well.

While she said she doubts everything will run perfectly at the start, she said she thinks the school is ready for the new schedule, which starts for students Aug. 14.

"I think the community would be surprised to know how much we have done," Bradshaw said.

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