Personalization at Farmington High School Part 2 - Using Our Time Differently

Over the past 18 months we have learned that if we are truly going to personalize for each student we needed to look at how we use our time differently.  High schools are very rigid places.  They run on a bell schedule and there is very little deviation from the daily schedule.  Students move throughout the day based on the clock.  It makes no difference how much time they actually needed to learn.  I was at a conference where another administrator actually boasted at how efficient high schools are at moving students around.  It struck me as an odd statement - if we know each learner is different, how can we meet those individual needs if we base our schedule on efficiency??  The answer is we can't.

In the spring of 2013, we made the decision to allow teachers to release students from their who met proficiency criteria to work independently - that is right, they could leave the room and work where ever they wanted in the building.  This freed up 15-20 minutes for teachers to work with individuals or small groups of students who needed support when they needed the support the most.  We continued to to tweak this "self-directed learning time" during the 2013-14 school year and were very happy with the results.  We found time to support students when they were learning and also allowed students to gain some control over how they used their time to support their own learning.

Moving into the 2014-15 school year we had to adjust our advisory period to implement Ramp Up to Readiness.  Through this process we again looked at how we could better use our time to support students in their learning and allow students to have of say in how they use their time during the school day.  We created seven different Academic Support times throughout the week.  There are four slots in the morning (before 1st hour) and three slots in the afternoon (after 5th hour).  Every student has been assigned to an Academic Support class.  Students will report to the morning Academic Support for the first three weeks of each trimester.  After the first three weeks, students will report each Monday.  During this time students in need of additional support with be assigned to their content classroom teacher for the remainder of that week.  The student and the teacher will come up with a plan of how to best support the student using the Academic Support times.  Students not in need of additional support will be able to use the Academic Support time to best support their own learning.  Students will be able to work independently, collaborate with other students, and meet with teachers.

We are excited about this schedule tweak.  We feel we will better be able to support students when they need it and students will be able to practice time management skills and truly begin to take some ownership for their learning.  Neither of these should happen for the first time when a student steps onto a postsecondary school - which is exactly what happens for most high school students.