My previous schedule had a ten minute break between classes. Our new schedule has been reworked to have only a five minute break schedule. This is the first time I’ve worked on a quick schedule in a few years. I’m still trying to decide how long a break between classes should be, but neither of these seem to be right.
Back when I was in high school we had four minutes between classes. This was enough time to go to a locker, grab a book, and run to class. Bathroom breaks were possible, if you were fast, and if you were in the right area. My high school wasn’t huge, but I don’t remember having a problem getting to class.
My current school is a fraction of the size of the gym of the school I used to attend, and yet I have students that come to class late. There are two hallways in the school, and the ONLY things that are classrooms are rooms they aren’t allowed in, or bathrooms. How can students come to class late when they had ten minutes to “show up” in the same classroom they are in from a previous hour?
The problem is that ten minutes lets students get up to no good. They can play games. They can run around. Rich kids can go to a corner store to try to buy a snack. Children also play crane games on the street corner. Ten minutes is enough time to run around and annoy everyone trying to do work in the school. This is why my director cut the break down to five minutes.
We now have five minutes to copy, prepare, grab books, go to the bathroom, rest our voices, and get organized. For a teacher, five minute breaks are too short. By the time I was able to tell someone about my class, run a few copies, and try to enter the bathroom, I was already out of time. Had I needed to do any substantial work, like preparing a test, I would have been very late.
If we could implement a “five minutes for students, ten for teachers” policy, it would work for the first few days, but would set a bad example to the students and would break down quickly. If students have to be in class, there needs to be a teacher there to enforce their good behaviors.
Having only five minutes is also difficult to keep atop of changes in schedules, and keeping classes with other teachers coordinated. I couldn’t even tell about a class before the next one was set to begin. This makes splitting up a schedule tough.
The ONE thing I like about the quicker break schedule is that we would potentially be getting out of class earlier. The only problem with this is that every hour the class ends at a different time meaning it’s much harder to keep track of, and the gains we would have had were offset by starting 25 minutes later in the day. We can squeeze more classes into a day, but if we start later, we don’t get to go home earlier.
On the other hand, ten minutes seemed long to me. I found time to make a test, or surf the Internet for some news between classes. This can be good, but it also feels like I want the class to start to get on with my day. I hate waiting around for a class to start. At least with a five minute schedule that’s never the problem.
If I could make a perfect schedule, it’d be closer to eight minutes than ten for breaks. This would throw all the schedules off, and no one would be able to stick to it. That’s about the time I’d need to make things work well for me though.
