Having to adjust schedules for Keystone testing at the high school in January and May, students and teachers are impacted in their learning due to shortened classes.
Social Studies teacher Nicole Harner says that the Keystone days cause a lot of time to be lost throughout the year because of the short schedule.
“You lose six days of class time, and in block scheduling, that’s 12 normal classes,” Harner said.
According to Harner, extra preparation is needed to ensure that the shorter class times remain productive.
“You have to really prep and make sure you’re at a certain point in your curriculum,” Harner said. “If you’re not, it’s hard to catch up.”
English teacher Krysten Momsen also feels that teachers still have to get through a lot of content during the shortened schedules.
“I think a lot of students think, ‘Oh, because our classes are short, we’re not going to do anything,’ and that’s not true because teachers still have content to get through.There are still due dates,” Momsen said.
Chemistry teacher Alison McGovern agrees. “I really have to be mindful of consolidating and almost skipping over some things, or breaking it apart in such a way that it will fit into the allotted time,” McGovern said.
As for students, senior Sarah Stratton believes it is harder to prepare for final exams or to ask teachers for help if she needs it during Keystone days.
“Personally, I don’t like how they’re so close to finals, because normally I feel like that’s when you need to be in a lot of your classes, because you don’t really have a lot of time,” Stratton said.
“While I do think it’s nice that sometimes you get a break and time to work on stuff, you’re not really able to utilize any teachers, so I think it’s detrimental.”
Sophomore Sriya Gorrepati agrees that it is hard to get help from teachers during the Keystone days.
“It’s definitely less time to go over a lesson or get help with a teacher if you need it,” Gorrepati said.
The Keystone schedules have an hour-long first block to accommodate all lunches, while the other classes are only about 30 minutes long.
According to Momsen, this makes it hard to keep the same course on the same agenda because of the different class times.
“I’m going to have my first block for a whole hour, and I’m only going to have my other class for half of that time,” Momsen said. “So I really have to adjust, and it’s hard to keep everything on track on those Keystone days.”
On the other hand, the later school start time allows for time to do other work.
“It does allow for a lot of teacher-directed work time that I’m not proctoring. I can get a lot of grading done, I can get a lot of planning done [and] I can get a lot of lab prep completed,” McGovern said.