Starting this semester, Cloverdale High School students were subject to a different school schedule — instead of having six classes per week, the school is now operating on a “3×3” schedule, which splits the semester into two quarters, with students focusing on roughly three classes per quarter.
This schedule, a condensed version of one adopted earlier this year by Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park and Geyserville Unified School District, has proved successful at helping students maintain their grades.
In the fall, CHS students had A days and B days, where A days they had first through third period and on B days they had fourth, sixth and seventh period. Now, students will focus on three classes from the start of the semester on Jan. 5 until March 19, then they’ll focus on their other three classes from March 22 until June 10.
“Six classes in a virtual learning environment is a lot for students,” CHS Principal Chris Meredith said. “It’s a lot for them to have to tackle — they were only getting to see their teachers twice per week. In going through what was working and what wasn’t working, and looking at some of the other schools that had tried some unique and creative things, we felt like the 3×3 was the move.”
In a November meeting between county districts and high school principals, Rancho Cotate Principal Louis Ganzler said that the schedule has helped both students and teachers.
“It has provided us the ability to cover the same material by the end of the year … but we have seen it’s taken an enormous amount of pressure off students and teachers,” Ganzler said.
Under the new schedule, CHS students will also see their teachers five days a week instead of only seeing them two days a week.
“It narrows the focus for the students — it also narrows the focus for the teachers,” Meredith said. “(There’s) less for them to prep. It gives them half of the students to communicate with. We’re hoping that that gives them the opportunity to provide more clear communication and outreach to families. But really the focus was on the students, on giving them more quality time with their teachers instead of more quantity.”
Additionally, the new school schedule takes CHS’ fifth period, which pre-pandemic is when students could get permission to go and see specific teachers, and replicates it. While each class period usually takes up 50 minutes, on Wednesdays each class is for 30 minutes, which shortens the day and leaves more time for students to reach out to their teachers.
When discussing the new schedule, Meredith said that one of their paramount concerns was making sure that it worked for students in AP classes.
“We were lucky. We wouldn’t be able to make this shift if we had a lot of AP classes in the B quarter,” he said, noting that AP Spanish is the only B quarter class that had to be moved over into the A quarter. Because there will be a gap between when students finish the class on March 19 and when they have to take the AP test, Meredith said that teachers who teach AP classes will continue to provide small group instruction to students during the B quarter.
“We felt like the pros outweighed the cons at the end of the day,” he said of the new schedule.
In an interview a few days after students started the new schedule, Meredith said that he heard positive feedback from parents and students.
But, going forward, Meredith said that the school is going to continue doing home visits and check-ins with students and families to make sure that the shift is working. When it comes to grades, the school has a mid-quarter progress report that will help them get a pulse on how the new schedule is or isn’t impacting student grades.
Can it adapt?
When looking at how to adapt the hush school schedule, Meredith said that a key component was making sure that whatever changes made could easily be shifted to a hybrid learning environment.
Should the district be allowed to reopen for hybrid learning in the future, the primary changes that would have to be made involve adding more time in between classes to allow for rooms to be cleaned and splitting up classes into two groups, an A1 cohort and an A2 cohort, which would make it so students could only see their teachers twice per week in person.
“We’ve ordered technology so that the teachers will livestream to those students, so the students still get five days of instruction including the Wednesday tutorial day, which will be all asynchronous,” Meredith said. “It would also support continued distance learning students … I wanted the teachers to have to prep for not more than one thing.”
Getting teachers used to livestreaming their lessons will involve a learning curve, he noted, but said that the high school has invested in iPads and tripods and will have development days to help teachers prepare for the new way of teaching.
