Watertown High School has modified its period schedule for the 2023-2024 school year, with agreement from staff, administration, and department heads, to reduce the WIN period and extend instructional time. Instructional time was increased in accordance with state regulations. Mr. Hogrefe, the Assistant Principal, speaks about the new 9-day schedule, and also his hopes for how the longer periods will affect the high school’s environment. This year’s schedule consists of 81-minute periods, with a 35-minute enrichment block and a 90-minute period that includes lunch – making the instructional time 63 minutes for the lunch period.
Mr. Hogrefe says the staff and administration decided on these block periods because they believed last year’s WIN period, which was 90 minutes, was too long and caused too many discipline issues. By minimizing the WIN block, the periods can be extended, and now students can have more time in class to complete work and finish projects. It is still early in the school year, so it’s uncertain whether the changes to last year’s schedule have helped with disciplinary concerns. However, the shorter enrichment block makes it difficult for most issues to occur during that time.
Along with the periods becoming longer, the schedule is now a rotation of a 9-day agenda with rotating periods on 8 of the days, and the 9th being an SSP day. Mr. Hogrefe states that the new cycle will, “Ensure equity in terms of how long the periods are in teaching time so they are the same across the board,” as the schedule last year did not have an equal amount of time during the class periods, and it was only an even/odd day schedule.
The students of WHS are ambivalent about the schedule – many seniors believe the enrichment period is too short for students to complete work. Some seniors suggested taking 5 minutes from each class to extend the time of enrichment. The teens also mention how teachers now suggest coming in the morning or after school to complete work or tests, but this comes with multiple concerns, such as: not having a ride in the morning to come in early; and work/sports after school.
The teachers, though, have a different perspective on the new schedule. Mrs. Quatrano, a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, personally enjoys the schedule. It gives her and her students more time during the period to work in the lab prepping food, cooking, and properly cleaning up, then she was able to have with the previous schedule. Ms. Bellemare, a Social Studies teacher, also likes to schedule, but instead, she favors it because of the rotating classes. She finds that with the new schedule, the blocks are not just placed in the morning or afternoon, but rather cycled throughout the day, benefiting both teachers and students as students tend to work better throughout different times of day. Plus, it gives students the ability to utilize enrichment for classwork.
Last year’s schedule did not allow equality between the class periods’ lengths, so this new agenda gives teachers an equal amount of time with their students and classes. Over the years, the upperclassmen of Watertown High School have been through multiple schedule changes and have dealt with many different variations of the schedule: longer and shorter WIN periods, three or four lunches, lengthier class periods, even and odd days, and so on. They hope this one is a successful improvement and will stick for more than one year.
