Personalization at Farmington High School Part 4 - Flexible Learning Time

We are now entering our third week of classes and teachers will be posting their two week grade updates by 4:00 pm today.  We already have students who need some sort of additional academic support.  Some are missing work, some need to retest or take an assessment, and some just need more instructional time.  In secondary buildings the big question has always been "how do you provide additional support within a traditional bell schedule?"  In my mind the answer is you can't.  So going into this year we tweaked our schedule to created flexible learning times within the school day.  Time that students and staff can use to best support the individual student in their learning.  Students needing additional support can be assigned during this time (again, it is within the school day) while other students are free to use this time as they see fit (they are not required to be anywhere).  We used to have a period in the middle of our day that served the same purpose, but all students were required to attend.  It was difficult for the teacher to help the students who needed it and still supervise another 25+ students.  Here is a graphic of our schedule:

We are requiring students to attend the morning Academic Support the first threes weeks of our trimester.  This gives students a home base and gives them a single staff member who will be checking in with them on a weekly basis on the academic progress.  The PM Academic Support is flexible learning time for the first two weeks of the trimester.  Students can work during this time in the building, meet with teachers, or leave the building if they chose.  Beginning the third week we are assigning students to meet with individual teachers during this time (that starts today!!).  Students are notified by their AM Academic Support teacher, the classroom teacher requesting them, and their parents get a notification.  Failure to show up with be treated like an unexcused absence.

When we met with our students at the beginning of the year we used the acronym TEA to talk about our exceptions.  

T - Time

E - Effort

A - Academic Support

We, as a school, are responsible for the Time (providing students as much time as they need to learn) and Academic Support (reason behind the schedule tweak) and students are responsible for the Effort.

The more our students work, the more control they will have over their time and how they use it.  In my mind this quote from Doug Reeves sums it all up "Proficiency is Freedom."