STOPPED BLOCK SCHEDULING:

When "restructured education" reared its ugly head, there were lots of stupid ideas bandied about:  year 'round schools, teacher as facilitator, schools without walls, pods, group learning, project learning and so on.  None of them have or will last, but they made money for those who proposed them and wasted tax dollars.

"Block scheduling" in our secondary schools was one of those dumb ideas.

Leonard Merrell wasted hours of my time, many administrators' time and his time, trying to get this really bad idea into practice.

Understand, please, that coming up with bad ideas is what the Texas Association of School Administrators does, and Leonard Merrell was their president! 

Block scheduling called for eliminating the regular 45 minute class period (down from 55 minutes twenty years prior) and making classes 90 minutes long.  There would be fewer classes, and they would be boringly long!

As a former teacher who knew about and understood the attention span of teenagers, I was very much opposed to this ridiculous idea.  I knew it would be disaster.

Long story short, but many boring meeting later, I was grateful that band directors, orchestra leaders, choir directors, and sports coaches came to the defense of my objections.  Thank goodness for those courses and activities!

Obviously having two ninety minute class periods for any of these activities in a week would undermine their activities.  Students need to do the things these teachers were teaching every day in order to improve. It's that simple.

I would maintain that the same principle holds true for academic subjects as well, but that's harder to get across to people.

Thankfully, Bob Bryant, you know the darling of KatyISD these days, helped me get across that idea, and we stopped block scheduling!

I'm sure he'd rather not be reminded of that effort, but I appreciated it.  He did a great service for our school district.