Raudean Barati ‘27
St. Andrew’s has had a plethora of different schedules and class lengths over the years, with blocks ranging from 40 to 80 minutes. Recently, however, the school has settled on 60 minutes as the perfect class length. Class planning is a sensitive process, and according to various teachers, even small changes can have drastic impacts on student life.
Mr. Brown, head of the upper school, said, “I think 60 minutes is a good time,”based on various factors, like optimizing homework schedules for students, adjusting to different classes’ needs, and ensuring students stay engaged throughout the day.
Longer classes are harder for students to pay attention throughout, but they also mean less cognitive load per day and less homework per day.
Mr. Brown said that the CTTL investigated schedules at a variety of schools before St. Andrew’s settled on 60-minute class periods. While 60-minutes may make it harder for students to pay attention, Mr. Brown stressed that lesson-design is the most important factor in terms of attention.
“Students don’t have 60 minute attention spans – they don’t even have a 30 minute attention span,” Mr Brown said.
Different teachers employ a variety of strategies in their lesson planning to keep students engaged and to take advantage of students’ “prime time,”which is the period where students retain new information best.
Mr. Null, a math teacher at St. Andrew’s, prefers to split the hour into smaller, more manageable segments to maximize engagement. He often begins his classes with a 10-15 minute warmup, then introduces new topics and finishes off with practice for the new material.
Mr. Null said that one disadvantage of the current schedule is that classes don’t meet every day. “I think math and language are classes where it’s more valuable to get coverage every day.”
He emphasized that by doing a bit of math every day, “you’ll be better off than long 1-2 hour periods only 2-3 times a week.”
“[As a student] I did my best math, having it constantly swirling in the back of my mind”, he added.
Mr. Revert, a Spanish teacher, also said his students would benefit from short classes with higher recurrence weekly.
However, some humanities teachers prefer the longer schedule, since it is beneficial for long, discussion-based classes. Science classes also seem to make the most of long classes because of time-consuming labs that can be interrupted by shorter blocks.
Mr. Brown agreed that some classes require more length, because science classes also seem to reap greater benefit from long, less frequent meetings. These classes often rely on discussions and labs, which teachers believe are sometimes interrupted by shorter schedules.
Mr. Brown said that 60-minutes is an effective middle ground between the class lengths different classes require. Furthermore, he said our schedule allows students to have less homework per night, letting them get more sleep and ultimately function better in the classroom.
There are rumors among students that changes to the schedule may occur next year, but Mr. Brown clarified, “Our standard will not change next year.”