By Everly Powers, Special to Nighthawk News
Staring off into space. Leg shaking. Blank sheet of paper sitting on the desk. Students not paying attention. Teachers getting frustrated. Endless minutes remaining before the bell rings.
Imagine a different scene, though, in a shorter class period. Would less time mean more focus to finish the work? Would the bell ringing after 50 or 60 minutes come right before boredom sets in at the end of class? Instead of periods when students don’t feel like working anymore, would shorter classes mean more productivity?
A regular school day at FFHS has four periods that are about 90 minutes long. Lunch is only 26 minutes.
Sophomore Ady Hedgepeth was asked if she thought 90 minutes was too long she said, “Absolutely.”
Students like Hedgepeth get overwhelmed and long classes make it harder for them to focus. Two ways to make classes shorter would be to add more classes to the school day or bring back some version of the study hall that most students had in middle school or high school before Covid.
Hedgepeth thinks the school should bring study hall back because she is very stressed with Chemistry this semester. She is also involved in dance most of her week nights.
“It would benefit me because I have other activities outside of school and it’s hard to do school work with those things going on,” Hedgepeth said.
Sophomore Violet Adams also said school would be less stressful with shorter classes.
“I think there should be six classes, because 90-minute classes are too long,” Adams said.
She also misses study hall, which she last had in sixth grade: “I feel like people would get better grades and we can get more work done if there was study hall,” Adams explained.
Sophomore Hayley Hahne said classes are way too long and should be around an hour. Like Hedgepeth, Hahne has dance practice almost every night, so study hall could help her not have to worry about homework as much after school: “It can stress you out when you have a bunch of homework when you have other things to do,” she said.
Math teacher Eric Gusler was asked if he, as a teacher, gets overwhelmed with the long classes and he said, “ I don’t get overwhelmed, but sometimes it’s hard to pack 90 minutes of instruction of activities into one period.”
Gusler also likes the idea of study hall being brought back.
“I would love to bring something like that back,” he said. “It’d be nice to have that study hall to be able to help those kids I can’t get to after school or during class.”
Schools across the country have different schedules that work for them. Four 90-minute classes is just one way to do it, and at FFHS, it’s not a popular way.
Sophomore Everly Powers wrote this story for her Intro to Publications semester project. She can be reached at PowersEv7195@daretolearn.org.
