In my high school in Texas, we did not use block scheduling. We signed up for eight classes at the beginning of the year, and every single day we attended all eight classes, from September through May. We took midterms for all eight in December before winter break, and took finals for them at the end of the year. When I moved to Vermont, however, it was completely different. I hadn’t even HEARD of block scheduling before, and it took me ages to get used to it. Instead of taking eight classes throughout the year, we took three every day for one semester and a different three every day during the second semester. We had midterms for our fall classes in October and the finals in December. Then when we came back from break in January we start a whole new set of classes that had midterms in March and finals at the end of the year. This is, of course, not unlike the system here at MCLA. The strange thing, though, was that we also had two classes that we attended every other day throughout the entire school year that had midterms before winter break and finals before school let out for the summer.
On the one hand, I liked block scheduling because if I was taking a class I didn’t like, it only lasted one semester and I didn’t have to keep sitting through it all year. On the other hand, when I took a class I really liked I hated that it ended so soon.
Did your school have block scheduling? Do you think block scheduling is a better or worse idea than the tradition system?
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