Abigail Wood’s AVID Civic Literacy class toured UNC Chapel Hill on March 20. The class has been on three field trips this year– they have more time for excursions because of the A day/B day schedule.
Riverside High School has operated on a four class per day, semester based schedule since 2006. The change from an eight class per day schedule was initially made to ensure that more students could graduate by doubling up on classes.
Though there are benefits to this system, there are also potential drawbacks.
Pros:
- The semester-based schedule allows students to retake failed classes in the second semester, as well as transfer to and from other public high schools in Durham because most of them follow the same schedule.
- The semester system also aligns better with the schedule at Durham Tech for students taking dual enrollment classes.
- Riverside students have less classes to handle than the traditional eight-class-a-day schedule at most American high schools.
- With 90-minute class periods, teachers have more time to go over material and give tests compared to the traditional 40-minute period.
- Taking four classes at a time is also potentially better preparation for attending university, as most colleges operate on this schedule. However, the four classes are typically not back-to-back so students have more time in between for studying.
Cons:
- For some classes, a 90-minute period might be too much time that teachers and students are unsure of how to fill. Classes can end up resembling study halls, which some students use to their advantage but some play games or talk to friends instead. The lack of structure could be harmful towards productivity.
- Subjects like math and world languages are cumulative, meaning that remembering the knowledge from your previous class is essential in moving on to the next one. When students have a semester without the class, on top of a summer break, they may feel less prepared to move on to the next level in the class.
- This memory loss over the semester may also be a problem for students taking AP classes. If the class is in the fall semester and the test is in May, there are several months in between for students to forget the material.
Taking an AP class in one semester
From 2000-2005, an average of 93.5% of students in Social Studies teacher David Norman’s AP Psychology class passed the AP exam. However, under the four class per day system from 2006-2014, 78.4% of students passed.
This decrease in the passing rate could be due to memory loss or to the more rushed nature of semester classes.
Social Studies teacher Anna Allman finds it challenging to fit all of the material of AP US History into one semester.
“All of my APUSHers will tell you we have APUSH things to do every single day,” said Allman. “In Durham Public Schools, we do not allow summer assignments, and so a lot of other schools nationwide that do APUSH in one semester do all of units one and two over the summer… and we don’t do that. So I do all of units one and two in the first nine days of school.”
Are A Day/B Day classes the solution?
Riverside’s AVID program offers college readiness classes meant to bridge the gap between standard-level and AP classes. These classes are held every other day throughout both semesters.
Social studies teacher Abigail Wood has standard, semester-long civics classes, as well as a year-long AVID civics class that meets every other day.
“The planning process [for AVID] has been a lot different,” said Wood. “It’s focused more on skills rather than content. So rather than planning out what things I need the students to know, I have to plan out the things the students should be able to do.”
Due to the year-long nature of the class, there is more time for students to develop skills like note taking, organization and working on longer projects.
“I like the relationships I get to build with students when I have them all year long,” said Wood. “When it’s just a semester-long class, it’s kind of hard because right when I get to know a student, it seems like it’s time for them to leave.”
However, pacing can be a challenge when students only have class every other day.
“Usually in my class, we take a quiz every Friday. But that doesn’t work because I don’t have the same group of students every single Friday so it gets a little more spread out,” said Wood.
Jordan High School offers A day/B day classes for AVID as well as for AP and Honors.
Jordan Junior Gretchen Poore takes AP English Literature and Spanish IV Honors on an A day/B day schedule, while the rest of her classes operate on the semester schedule.
“I think it’s really good for my language classes,” said Poore. “For English and Spanish, those are skills you want to work on developing over the whole year.”
Poore finds the workload for her year-long classes more manageable than her semester classes, as there is more time for readings and less pressure for grades.
“My physics class and calculus are both semester classes, so for those I kind of prioritize them just a little bit more because I know that my grade is over when the semester is over,” she said.
A day/B day classes could be an opportunity for students to learn complex material at a calmer pace and in a less stressful environment.
“[In my standard classes] have review days where we make sure we’re all caught up on the unit we’ve been doing before we take our formal assessment,” said Allman. “And in APUSH, we don’t do that at all, we just keep marching through.”
If APUSH material was spread out over two semesters, there might be more time for review days.
“I wouldn’t have so much of a time crunch,” said Allman. “That would give me three extra months, basically.”
“There’s a lot more flexibility and there are projects and things I’ve been able to do with my AVID students that I would not have had the time to do with my Civics students,” said Wood.
Though Poore enjoys her year-long classes, she does not think Jordan should return to an entirely A day/B day schedule like they had in the past. Taking eight classes at a time, even when they alternate per day, can be a lot to juggle and make transferring schools complicated.
On the teachers’ end, eight classes is many more students to handle. “You’re learning a lot more kids at the same time,” said Allman. “Which means you have… a lot more contacts home and IEPs and sort of the paperwork stuff you’d have to handle all at once. But I’d be willing to try it.”
“Learning names [in the beginning of the year] was really stressful with double the roster size,” said Wood.
Another potential downside to A day/B day classes is that they come in a pair. For example, at Jordan, AP Statistics and AP Psychology are paired together. If a student wanted to take a particular class every other day, they would have to also take whichever class is paired with it, even if they are not interested in the subject.
