It seems that time is always against us in the education business.  I feel like I have less and less time every year to accomplish more and more stuff.  There are continuing pressures to improve test scores, to make relationships with students, to be involved in the school, join committees, and by the way stay healthy and take care of your self. Not to mention the outside pressure from politicians and pundits to improve education in this country.

It seems to me that it is almost impossible to do all of these things in the constraints that we are under at our school.  Let’s look at some numbers:

Number of hours I see a class per week: 3.75

Number of weeks: 18 minus 1 for final exams

Total number of hours in a semester:  63.75

So overall, I see students for about a week and a half of a full time job.

Even more shocking is that a typical student in my high school is in class for only three 90 minute blocks in a typical day.  That is only 4.5 hours a day!  If you include 6 classes on a Wednesday (we have eight 47 min periods on Wednesdays) that makes 22.5 hours a week in school.  That is barely a part time job.

My point with all these numbers (sorry if I bored you, but I am a math teacher after all) is that if we really want to improve test scores, improve schools, and improve the US education position in the world, I have a simple solution.

Make school a full time job for kids. That’s it!

If kids were in school for 8 hours a day (not including lunch), think of the level of depth that we could have in all subjects.  We could have 8 hour long periods a day that would be 5 hours of math per week for every kid.  That would be a 33% increase in contact time per week.  I think that might make a difference, especially for struggling math students.  They would benefit from seeing me every day and getting consistent math instruction.  What do you think?  How does your school compare to mine?  I would love to know.

Sorry for the vent.  It has been a difficult first few weeks of school.