Transcript of Speakers

III. Case Studies from Schools that Adopted Scheduling A. The 4 by 4 Block Schedule

Moving to a 4 by 4 Schedule I'm often asked by visitors at Angola High School why we would want to move to a 4 x 4 block schedule. And I'm quick to point out often that I don't always think of our schedule as a 4 x 4, even though everyone conjures up in their minds what that means and so forth. I've often heard Lynn Canady say that probably the best schedule is one that incorporates some hybrids of different kinds of schedules. And that's certainly what we do here. Even though our basic fundamental schedule is a 4 x 4, there are things that we do to make other programs work within it. I think the important thing for schools to consider when they're looking at block scheduling is the research on what different kinds of scheduling structures do for students. The only reason we were going to change anything is to make it better for students. And, certainly, that was a focus that we had at Angola High School when were looking at making some transition. But Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution is a document that I know many of the listeners of this program will know well. And within that document it talks about three different types of schedules that offer opportunities for students to do things like repeat a class within a year, or to accelerate within certain areas that— perhaps they want to take two math classes in a year—those kinds of things. Also, we have to find ways in our scheduling of high schools to reduce the number of students that teachers see within a grading period, not just on a daily basis on our team, but within a grading period; so that class load is less so that they can work more effectively with their students. So some of the whys of going to a 4 x 4 block schedule for us would be imbedded in those questions of what kinds of schedules deliver those things for students. Certainly, the 4 x 4 is not the only one, but I would encourage all listeners of this program to look at scheduling in a way that provides those kinds of things for students that are better than the research and are schedules that permit the flexibility for those things if you want. I often refer to the

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schedule at Angola High School as Angola High School's flexible scheduling not the 4 x 4 or not the trimester or not an alternating block or whatever. Because I think too often parents and others have preconceived notions of what those schedules are. And because they have a relative in Colorado or any state or neighboring our school, wherever that might be, they think that what we're doing in this school must be what is happening in another school. It may be positive; it may not be. But regardless it's probably going to be different than Angola High School; and it's probably going to be different in every school, based on things like how you run your bus schedules or how you do lunches or how you share teachers with middle schools or whatever the situation may be. It's probably going to be different. But I hope individuals look at the research, look at what's best for kids. And, in our case, that's why we chose the basic 4 x 4 structure and then made some modifications to make it work for us. Prior to moving to our block scheduling at Angola High School, we were on a traditional seven-period day. And I would simply report to everyone that traditional schedules have served us well for years; however, there are a number of things that today's students need and, perhaps, the pressures of education in the past were not the same. I know, for example, today we are expected to have a hundred percent graduation rate, and that's the only acceptable thing that we're after. Therefore, we have to have the flexibility to offer different kinds of programs. So, our seven-period day in the past on the 50-minute period, seven of those per day, is not unlike a six-period day or an eight-period day. But it meant the students went from one class to the next—that might be science to English to physical education to a business course—with probably not a lot of continuity in what they did. So, we were looking for a way to deliver our education in a way that was not only a vehicle for change, but also a stimulus for positive kinds of things that happened within the classroom. So that was a critical piece and move that we made from a seven-period day to a four block schedule.

The Transition Process BY: REX BOLINGER I’m often asked by guests of our school who come to visit us to tour and visit with our students and teachers, How is it that you made the change, the transition, from what you did at

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one time to what you currently do? This is an interesting story, probably not unlike many others. But I can recall about seven years ago sitting with the faculty in a meeting suggesting that I’d like to have volunteers who would like to explore with me in the coming fall schools who were looking at block scheduling. And there were none really in Indiana at the time. And we took a trip to Missouri and to other states to look at what people were doing with scheduling. And, fortunately, I had eight volunteers that indicated they would be interested to go. And I was lucky because the majority of those eight volunteers are people that I would call pillars of the faculty, the foundation kinds of people. And I found about a year later that three of them volunteered just to make sure it would never happen. And, so, you kind of get the picture of how we started this. I don’t think our faculty is unlike any other faculty. I mean, I’ve talked to enough individuals and visited enough schools to know that you have three segments in a faculty. One segment are the people who would just fly tomorrow if we brought in change and said, “We’re going to bring these things about if you want to join us.” And then you’d have another segment, second segment, that would be okay; but they’ll need some help. And they’ll be able to move and progress and grow, but you have to help them do that. And then you’ll have a third segment that essentially will do anything they can do to keep this change from happening because they see their setting for the good right now, and why change that kind of thing. And I think that’s true whatever you look at in change. And, of course, we’ve all read enough research to know lots of things about change and how that affects us. But it’s an important piece to keep in mind as you’re making a transition. So we did our visits. And the surprising thing to me was that as we visited other schools, regardless of what type of block scheduling they were on when we visited them, we seemed to be finding that people by and large enjoyed things much more, students liked it better than a traditional seven-period day. And I would report to you that there were schedules that we looked at that we came back and we were excited about, and we thought this is what we wanted to do. But then as we started to look at how that would fit within our setting, perhaps there were things about it that we would have to change and whatever. And we had lots of discussions.

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How Does Block Scheduling Affect Retention? BY: REX BOLINGER We really were worried about this whole issue of academic retention because on schedules like ours now, you teach a traditional algebra class, for example, in a semester. And everyone asked about things like math and foreign language, band. Instrumental music's a big one. How in the world can you do something—let's go back to algebra. First of all, teach it because kids have to have the soak time. They have to have time to learn something and then reflect upon it. And then to really absorb it, have this time. And I would report to you that we put this schedule aside for about three months because we were concerned about that issue. But yet this schedule seemed to bring all of the other components into place because we wanted kids to be able to accelerate and take more courses within a year. We wanted the kids to have opportunities where they have longer period of time so they could leave our building and experience things within the community and come back and do that. So, we had to find the research that indicated how people remember things. There wasn't a whole lot at the time, and there still isn't, I don't think, on schools and block scheduling. But there's a wealth of information in ed psych on how people learn and remember and how long they retain things. So we went to that research, and we found what has been validated in a number of studies. But, yes, if you read something, for awhile you do forget some things. And generally within two weeks after learning something, you're going to forget most of what you're going to forget. And that's the low-level recall stuff, the factual information and things that you had to memorize. But then that tends to taper off, and you're forgetting lessons. And it's about a steady indicator over 18 months. So, basically, we talked among the faculty and among parents and said, If we're going to take summers off, which we do up to three months, we might as well take up to 18 because you need the same amount of review time when you reintroduce the material to bring yourself back to speed in either case. We found that to be true. What really matters is how well something is taught the first time. And as Howard Gardner talks about having emotional experiences with the material, and you really learn most things, I would much rather teach one or two plays as compared to five plays. It might have been in the past that if we teach them well, if we engage kids, if we can have emotional experiences with them they're going to remember

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things rather than the spray and pray method of, "I have to cover 18 chapters; therefore, the easiest way for me to do that is to lecture. I’m going to spray the information out to you and hope you remember some of it." As we have made the transition, our faculty has had lots of discussions with me. I've had people come up to me and say things like, "You know, before we moved to this block schedule, I was considering not continuing in education. Now I wouldn't do anything different." We've finally been able to give people a vehicle through which they have the time to take the research that we know about teaching and implement it. It's not that you're confined by a short 50-minute, 60-minute, or 45-minute lesson and the kids are going to something else. I think this faculty would be very comfortable with having a class all day long for four weeks. I mean, what is there about 50-minute segments, seven periods a day, that have to do with anything about learning other than that's the traditional structure, and it follows an industrial model that we all know, and it's the one that we all grew up with. It certainly doesn't have to do anything with what we know about the human mind and how it learns and what we know about brain research today. So we're trying to get out of that box and move to different kinds of flexible experiences for students. Longer periods of time allow us to do that. When you look at indicators of, "Well, yeah, but some students will learn better in shorter segments," that's great. Within a 90-minute period or a full day, I can make lots of short segments of things in this period. It's not that I'm bound by that in every session or that we can't continue to have an outdoor lab or a lab within our classroom or teachers engaging kids in lots of different strategies that help them learn better. We have found that our scores have increased, our teachers have become happier, our students are doing better on standardized tests. And there are a lot of components to that. Staff development is one of them that I'll refer to in a moment. But these are all important things that our transition, and I could review a number of personal stories; but those are things that we'd be happy to talk with you about at any time if you wanted to contact us and talk to us. And each of our teachers would be glad to interact with you on the web and things like that. Those are kinds of experiences that I think are a credit to this faculty and this student body, and has helped us make the transition from a seven-period day on to a block scheduling situation.

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Staff Development Needed to Move to Block Scheduling BY: REX BOLINGER Another question that we're regularly asked at Angola High School is, How do you accomplish staff development because it's ongoing, it's something that has to occur from the beginning and continue. It never really ends. It's a continuous process. It's lifelong. But I guess the particular question is, How do you prepare a staff to move from a seven-period day into the block scheduling, and then what do you do after that? I guess our reaction to that has been from experience in that, first of all, I would say that experienced teachers don't throw out the window the skills that we've learned over a number of years. You keep those. You continue to use them. But the issue is engaging active learners around the research that we know about how students learn best. We know about current brain research and how kids learn best—and we all learn best as adults—and capitalize on those things. At Angola High School, we were probably fortunate in that prior to going to block scheduling for several years we had received a Milken Foundation grant—a team of four other school districts in the state to look at ways of making school improvement. So we studied things like mastery learning and cooperative learning and all the things that may have picked up a bad name in some circles today. And we were cautious about moving in those directions. We studied those things and we looked at what we should be thinking about in terms of making change in schools. It wasn't until we started looking to this notion of block scheduling though that I would say to you that teachers felt like all of a sudden here's a vehicle to begin starting to do the things that we'd been talking about and having the time and the flexibility to do those things. Because, frankly, they were just really not working well in 50 minutes. And, so, that was intriguing. So we started with those kinds of issues in our background. And then I've heard Lynn Canady say a number of times that he wouldn't recommend a school make any changes shorter than a year in looking at how are we going to handle this thing in a longer period of time. Because you do have to look at pacing; you do have to look at, okay, if I'm going to engage active learners, why and how. I don't just want to pull something out of the bag and say, I'd do this today. I want to do it based on what I know about my students; what I know about their learning styles; what I know about things that they bring to the

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classroom. And then I strategically pick these things so they learn better. And within any class you can probably think that you might have at least two or three different learning styles in one of the students. So you want to address them differently. So we've done things in four- block format, rather, lesson planning; and things that help us look at those particular issues and how we're going to develop lessons for each one of our classes. But, again, there has to be some motivation. And, so, for us, our story kind of proceeded like this. We did that work—preliminary work—and moved into block scheduling. I wasn't overly concerned about our repertoire of skills because I knew we had them. But I also knew that we needed to continue to get better as we're going to do every year. In that first year, we asked for a group of volunteers that would like to consider presenting programs to other teachers in our area the following summer. So we had roughly seven months at that time to consider that. And about 25 people said that they'd like to volunteer to put this program on the following summer. But to do that, we all agreed that we had to be cutting edge. We had to be up on the latest research on best practice. And, so, as a group, we decided to have a format where we would meet once a week, in the morning before school; and that we would look at as many teaching strategies as we could find—Lynn Canady's research, Bruce Joyce's research, and others helped us—significant guide for us during this time. And, so, groups of teachers—groups of three, generally groups of four—paired together. Each one of them took a different teaching strategy or model of teaching, went out and researched it, used it in their classrooms, would bring it back to those teachers on another given morning, and present a lesson. The teachers were students while other teachers were teaching. They would give them handouts for their portfolios and their notebook to keep. And the whole incentive was to move towards preparations for our summer discussion with other teachers, and at the same time be a part of the process that would put on this summer program and, therefore, be reimbursed for our work and things like that as a result of the program. And that was all teacher driven, teacher developed, and worked very well; not only as an incentive, but also as a way to improve our skills better. And I think you can all see for a moment how that would affect your entire school—all of your faculty and so forth—in a positive way. That first summer went very well. We thought we would hold our participants to 400 participants. We finally ended up

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taking 430, and we turned away 50. And so we thought that was very successful. As a result of the things that we did that summer, we started the next fall then by dividing our entire faculty into peer coaching groups and took those teachers who had trained themselves well and made sure we had at least one or two in each one of those groups. And we allowed each group to develop goals around what they wanted to learn. And we developed school-wide goals and individual goals each year. And we allowed those teams to grow around the strengths of each of the faculty members. That whole concept has stayed with us. We tweaked it from year to year; we've done different things with it. But this whole concept of faculty working with faculty really drives what we do.

Peer Coaching for Block Scheduling PD BY: REX BOLINGER Another program that we learned about through the High School Magazine is what we call the Angola High School 2+2 faculty visitation. And maybe this is really unique, but here’s how we run it at Angola High School. We ask for volunteers again. And we say, “How many of you would like to be able to allow other teachers to visit you during the day and for you to be able to visit other teachers while they’re teaching?” Some of you might be thinking this is kind of a threatening thing. How many times would I let somebody else come into my classroom on a day when I might not be expecting them and just open my classroom doors and let people come in and watch me. We have maybe a little more safeguards than that. I mean, we know the days that it’s going to happen and things like that. But in our structure, we have a situation where faculty, on a daily basis, cover a seminar tutoring session for students for roughly 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how they set it up. So what we do on a given day is have a substitute come in, and the substitute will cover them for that session so the teachers don’t miss any classes. But during that day, they have an opportunity to go out and give any of the teachers who are in this pool of volunteers who are teaching during that period; and, generally, they have time to visit too for roughly 25 minutes each or something like that. 2+2 comes from we ask them to give them two compliments and two suggestions each time they visit. So the faculty member then have this little sheet that they can tear off, and they can keep these in their own portfolio. They met as a group and

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talked about the ground rules on how we give suggestions and how we give compliments and things like that. And, oh, by the way, we agreed that while some schools might do things like this and the principal gets a copy; only if you want me to see a copy do I get a copy. So some teachers will share some of those with me, and others want to keep them confidential and do it as a self-evaluation, self-growth thing. But where I’ve really seen it to be positive is can you imagine for a moment our master teachers on this campus allowing our beginning teachers to come in and watch them teach during the day and talk about I’m going to be doing a Socratic seminar, do you want to come see me today; or they can have that kind of exchange. It’s really been a positive thing for us in staff development. I am convinced that the peer coaching model is a strong foundation for staff development; so much more beyond what I can do by coming in and visiting and in evaluations spending one class period and making some suggestions. That’s still a component. I need to do that. But to be much more effective, I need to visit on a more regular basis for shorter periods of time, interact with people, and get people engaged with one another who are into the literature, into the research, and sharing with each other their successes and things that they need to improve upon the next time they do it. I would report to you that our school has become a community of learners. Think for a moment about what I just described to you, and our students watching these things—teachers coming in and watching other teachers. One of the most successful experiences we had not long ago was when we invited about 15 of our top technology students to come in and present a staff in-service day to our staff. So they started here. And as a result of that, each of us now—and I have my own student tutor in technology who meets with me once a week and helps me with things I haven’t learned. Last week, my student sat down beside me and said, “Now, remember how I showed you last week to transfer these files.” And I sat there kind of dumbfounded for a moment saying, “Yes, I think I can remember.” And he said, “I could do it for you quickly, but I’m not going to. You have to go through this.” So he sat beside me until I muddled my way through in getting to what I needed to do, patted me on the back, and said, “I’ll see you next week.” So that’s the kind of thing that I think is real positive. If we don’t know something, we ask. And I don’t think there is anyone on this faculty who is threatened by that. And probably in every school today

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there are a number of students who are much more proficient than most principals and maybe some teachers and things like that. And that sharing of information is neat. So our climate and what we do on a daily basis, I think, is driven by this whole concept of a working community that support one another. We like to learn from one another and share. And that’s helped our climate. And I would underscore the fact that our schedule has allowed us to have a vehicle with which we can do these things in a different structured pattern than what we knew before. I can only compare ourselves to ourselves. We’re unique. We have our own culture just like every school has. But we’ve been able to make some positive changes around good things in climate and the vehicle in our block schedule.

Evaluating the Success of the 4 by 4 Block Schedule BY: REX BOLINGER Evaluating the success of our program is very important. Program evaluation is probably the most critical piece that anyone can do going into any kind of change with a program. However, sometimes it is the most overlooked piece. Unfortunately, I’ve talked to some schools fairly recently that came here to visit us about some struggles they were incurring. One school, in particular, comes to mind that had been on the block similar to ours for two years. And they were having some difficulty and wanted to talk; they wanted to come and visit. And one of my first questions was, “What are your statistics showing?” And I kind of got a blank stare, like, what do you mean. And I said, “Well, how was it before and how is it now and what’s your data showing?” And they really weren’t keeping any data. And if we had done it that way, when people would ask us, “How is it going?” I could say, “Well, it feels better. I think things are going a whole lot better, but how do you know?” A lot of people want to see the quantitative hard data, what were your scores and everything you can collect numbers on before moving into this program, whatever it is, and what are they afterwards. So, in our case, we’re talking about block scheduling. But in program evaluation, it could be any program that you institute. You first have to start with what you knew about yourself before you changed; and then when you go through this what you know about yourself afterwards. If you’re going downhill, obviously that’s not the direction you want to go. If you’re staying stable, it tells you one thing. If you’re improving, it tells you

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one thing as well. So we were fortunate that we had some people who really wanted to focus in on that type of work. And they created a committee to be able to collect numbers on everything you can collect numbers on, from the graduation rates to discipline referrals to grades that are issued in classes to how many books go out of the library on a daily basis. So those are things that I would recommend you do ahead of time. I would simply report to you that all of our data really has shown improvement. I’m glad. Some of it is highly statistically significant improvement, other is just improvement, but maybe not statistically significant; but I’m glad the data’s going in that direction. So, for me, this whole idea of evaluation comes down to, many times, interaction with students and parents. I was very eager the first year—the first few months actually—the first year, and then every year after—to get this information and feedback from parents and students. So we do things on a yearly basis, like, everybody gets surveyed in the spring. We did it more often than that our first couple of years. Every time grade reports come out, our committee collects that information, and we look at those statistics. And we update our information. We put it on the web so people can see what we’ve done. We first made the commitment to our school board to say, if you allow us to make this move, we will report to your regularly. And regardless of where the data go, we will report it honestly to you. It was critical for us too to have some people that really had high amounts of integrity in this community and, perhaps, some would have looked at me and said, “You’re manipulating the data” if it was possible. But with these people, they wouldn’t. And that was important for us to have that in place. But we do a year-end report. We put it together in a professional package that looks much like a slip-covered paper magazine, if you will, that is mailed to every parent’s home. It goes to all of our businesses; all of our partners in the community. We say, “Here’s the state of the school. This here is what we’ve done.” Lots of bar graphs; lots of explanations on everything that we do. So I think that’s important to communicate that to people. I would say to you too that that evaluation has quieted our naysayers. Without that, your critics still can come at you from lots of ways. But why would you want to go back to something different? Why would you want to change something, perhaps, that is highly statistically and significantly better for kids and for teachers and everyone else? So that’s what I mean by that component. And, finally, I’d just share one

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thing with you. I think the principals in this audience who are listening to this will identify with this next statement. One of my measures of whether or not a program is successful, might be the number of parent complaints or issues that occur in my office on a regular basis. We have been on this four block schedule for five years, and I have had yet to have one parent in my office complaining about the schedule. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had issues or problems or that the counselors haven’t worked with things. But when it gets to my level, a problem like why my students can’t get into this college, or did you know that my student isn’t cheating because. . . I’ve not dealt with any of those questions. That’s a tribute to this faculty and to this student body and the effort they take on staff development to make students successful. But I’ve often said, “I can learn more standing in the grocery line about our school and community listening to parents talk than I can by other forms of evaluation.” And that’s been very positive for me. And I’m happy to share those kinds of results with you.

Establishing a Faculty Advisory Committee BY: REX BOLINGER. There are a number of issues about changing a school schedule or making it better for students that had to do with this whole thing of school climate and the culture within the building and so forth. And this whole discussion is so much more than just changing a bell schedule; it's about how it affects the entire learning community within the school and the community at large. An interesting component for us that has resulted from our work in making this transition is that the group of teachers who were original volunteers to look at block scheduling really started to come together to make an interesting group of teacher leaders. However, they were simply volunteers to begin the process of transition. It seemed to work so well though that this faculty wanted to look at how can we continue that. We're in the block scheduling now, but how do we continue that structure so that it helps us continue to make more positive change and grow? What came out of that was a change in the block scheduling committee was the faculty advisory committee, and they are elected by the faculty. They developed their own constitution, which is a nine member faculty. We have two parents and two students and myself on this committee. Nine members simply came because we wanted three-year terms, and every year there would be three teachers going off

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and three more elected. Every person on this faculty is on the ballot. Every person votes for three people each year, and some are reelected for additional terms. But the importance of this is we've said to the faculty, "Make sure that you're electing people who you want to represent you in any school decision that comes along." It could be something about the schedule, but it could be something about a database operation; it could be a curricular issue, whatever. We want you to elect the strongest people on this faculty. It's been an interesting process, but this grew from block scheduling into the faculty advisory committee that has officially meant monthly; but now we're meeting weekly for 15 minutes rather than monthly for 45. It's become a positive thing for us, and the faculty develops the agenda. I can add agenda parts to that. But it developed first as site-based management, but it grew from this whole transition of block scheduling. So it really affects climate positively. But it's one more component of what I've heard, again, people like Lynn Canady and Dave Hottenstein and others talk about the potential of block scheduling. It's its greatest strength. We are finding things daily—even after having been in this for five years—that there's a another potential for learning and we thought about prior to that. So, it's been an interesting journey from that perspective.

Sending Students Off Site to Learn from Business Partners BY: REX BOLINGER. Many people talk about what it is about seeing a school community grow and where does block scheduling fit into all of this and so forth. I spoke a moment ago about the fact that block scheduling is so much more than simply changing a bell schedule and hope that things get better because your kids have longer periods of time to learn. Throughout this entire program, we talked about how those things change. But I believe a really critical and strong piece of making a schedule and a school sustain itself, we become a community of learners and you grow is to bring in every partner and community member that surrounds your school. We knew that we had about two years in a schedule like this where students could accelerate to be able to offer them more opportunities. One way to do that would be to offer more classes in your curriculum and, for us, hire more teachers. Another way to do that would be to bring in community partners. How many of us have thought on a

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regular basis some of our critics are out in the community or within the state. Oftentimes, we feel like our industrial base is pointing a finger at us saying, "If you only would educate better, our product would be better; therefore, our business would be more successful." And we always feel like they have no idea of what it is to educate a child. And we're not dealing with widgets. We can't throw out the bad raw materials, we take them all. And, therefore, we're always at odds with each other. We wanted to bring these people in and make them partners with us. So over about a two year period we started block scheduling and we were okay. We have these students who are going to be accelerating faster, they're going to be taking our AP calculus as juniors. What do we offer them next. So we had that issue. We also said, "We want these business partners to feel like they are a part of what we're doing so we get away from some of the finger pointing and have them be partners shoulder to shoulder with us." We decided, because of some things we heard happening in Peoria, Illinois, around Caterpillar headquarters and plant, to visit Caterpillar and to visit the Illinois Central College and the high schools there with key leaders in our community—some CEOs from some industries, from Tri-State University, a small private university in our community. We took this trip. We spent three days together. And the result of that was we can do similar things. We don't have a Caterpillar in our community, but we have lots of small businesses and industry. And as a result, they said, "What would it be like if each one of those businesses created a class for one student, one hour a day, to come and learn from us; and we would be the teachers." As a result of that, in our school of 850, we have roughly 120 students a year who go out and experience those things for maybe a term of nine weeks, and then come back and relate those experiences to the classes that they take here in the school and make connections that way. We think that we have added about 23 classes to our curriculum without adding staff. And it's helped us keep our class sizes consistent, even though we have seen growth in our school. So that partnership has been very positive. Those people meet with us monthly in committees. We talk about things that are happening in the school. Our foundation and structure support base throughout this community has grown so significantly, and the support for what we're doing is there. But if some attack would come from us from any direction, I would simply call those people together quickly

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and we would work together as partners to eliminate those issues. So those things, again, we believe are very critical to developing a school climate and culture around much more than block scheduling. But I think you can see from this whole discussion how that schedule has become the vehicle for us to do all of the things I talked about in this program. And those are the things that we wanted. Are there are other structures that would do things similarly? I think so. Not just what we're doing here should be a cure-all for all settings. However, look for those kinds of things first that you want to do for your students and then what vehicle will get you there, and go about the process of implementing that. So I wish you all the best. I hope things go well for you and if we can do anything for anyone watching this in the future, please contact us

Teaching Strategies Needed for Longer Class Times BY: DAVID SNYDER. Once we decided we needed to go on some kind of a change, it became apparent that it was going to require some changing of our teaching strategies. Just changing the bells wasn't going to be enough. There had to be changes taking place within the classroom, and this was brought out a the workshops that we were starting to attend. So we made a strong effort in getting as many of the staff that would participate in going to other workshops that looked at different teaching strategies that would more actively involve their students in the learning process. A high percentage of the staff got involved in this. And we are still continuing doing that same kind of thing. It initially started out by going to workshops; and then as we looked at the changes in the strategies that we were going to have to implement, we started to team ourselves up and start critiquing each other and trying it out on our students. And then coming back and saying, "Well, it worked in my class; it didn't work in mine; well, why didn't it?" And it became a closer staff by doing this. We realized we were almost like first-year teachers after we started going to the block. It was very much that kind of a feeling. We knew what kind of teaching strategies we wanted to do, but it was how do you implement them and how do you make these transitions that you need to do in making several changes—at least three different kinds of teaching strategies being used in each period. So it became quite a learning process for the staff. The staff has continued

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doing this through the five years so that they not only go out to other workshops as participants, but they also are going and becoming leaders of workshops. And, of course, in becoming leaders, they've polished their skills more and tried them out more on their own students and continue to perfect them. It's very much a continuous process that I think we'll always be going through. The very first quarter of going to the block schedule, all of us were very anxious to see how the data compared with our baseline. And we had really no feeling of how it would be. So I was assigned the task, as being head of the committee doing this, to start putting it together. And really, to my surprise and probably nearly everyone else's, everything we looked at had a marked improvement. It happened immediately. The grades went up for the students almost one grade point—we're on a 12-point schedule, based on a 12-point scale. So it's about the equivalent of a half a letter grade for the average students. Discipline referrals went way down. There were basically no conflicts in the hallways. And this we noticed actually within the first couple weeks of going to the block schedule where the students were shoving each other in the hall and rushing to get to their class. It just seemed like they were calmed down; almost like you'd given them a sedative. And I'm sure it was the fact that they were concentrating on only four classes instead of the seven. And they weren't as stressed. And, so, it fell over into the hallways and into the discipline referrals. We were anxious—the grades on each quarter continued actually improving that first year. And we were curious of whether this maybe just because we feel good about ourselves; we're really trying hard. And is it just that teachers are escalating their grading scales. And, so, we were very anxious when we started looking at some of the national tests that the students were taking—the SATs and the ACPs—that first year; and didn't get the results back until the middle of summer. And were very encouraged that those also were showing improvement, which lead us to realize that we probably had some internal confidence being put in and maybe there was no effort made to say to the teachers, "Hey, you, you need to look at other ways of assessing your students." There was never any pressure to do that. And there may have been some of that going on subconsciously just because we were more pleased with what we were seeing. And you also got to know your students a little bit better and looked at them a little more as a person and could take into account possible

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personal problems that they were having and give little extensions here and there that you hadn't done before. The national exam scores have shown that it's not just internally, because our national scores have gone up since we've gone to the four block schedule. So it has to be a change that's taking place more than just within our four walls. It's of an internal adjustment for our grading schedule and things like that. I've been trained as a scientist, so I really enjoyed looking at quantitative data. I like numbers. I like manipulating numbers. But I realized that a lot of times people have feelings, and you need to analyze these feelings, the impressions that they have over the data. So that with the use of a questionnaire, we established some qualitative data; and with this qualitative baseline information, we could then see if the community, if the student body, and if the staff were satisfied with the direction that we were going. And it allowed us to identify if there were any spots in it that were really, people weren't satisfied with. We really found very few places that they've been dissatisfied with. There's been some discussion and a little bit of the use of our seminar period that is unique to Angola's 4 x 4 block program, but those are pretty divided on how that is being utilized. But the qualitative data gives you a place where you can look at that kind of information and make adjustments and meet with groups and have discussions over these items. Without good leadership, a school cannot possibly find the direction they want to go. Leadership is so important. The leadership skills have to be ones that will open doors for staff and allow them to look in other directions. Leadership skills have to be ones that will make suggestions and offer guidance as to what new avenues should be looked at. This was extremely important with the Angola program. Had it not been for our leadership at the top, we most certainly wouldn't have decided to go to a 4 x 4 block schedule. That's a very crucial piece to any school improvement program. If you have the support from the very top that will allow you to make changes, take chances, but yet you can't take chances at the students' mercy. It has to be chances that you have a reasonable guess that it's going to be successful. We can't use our students' welfare as an experimental lab, but it's important that leadership at the top allows you to start looking at these options.

Classroom Management Needed for Block Scheduling

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BY: TROY HENDRICKS One of the big topics that we talk about to begin with is classroom management. What's the difference with 90 minutes versus, you know, a 45- minute or a 50-minute thing? And some of the things that—because the math teachers will add up minute-by-minute and decide, Well, we're actually losing time. But I would argue— and I use the persuasion that I can do more in a 90-minute period than I could in three 50- minute periods. So I'm actually gaining, and especially as a writing teacher, when you have to break the writing down and do the prewriting one day and then shut down; and then do the rough draft the next day and shut down; and then do the final copy. Well, in a 90-minute block, I can take the students through the whole writing process in one 90-minute block. And classroom management skills like how do you start class. Instead of the students coming in and with the attendance and things like that, we talk about maximizing that first five minutes of class. So I put a thought for the day up on my—I have my television connected to my computer. So I take a power point, and I put a positive thought for the day up. The students, as soon as they walk in, know they have to pick up their journals and their vocabulary book and take their seats. And they write the thought for the day. Then over on the board there's a grammar sentence, or it could be a brain teaser. And after they have the thought for the day written down—and maybe like right now we're doing commas. So I put sentences on the board that either be skill that we're going to talk today or to review the skill that we talked about yesterday. So the students know they have to copy the sentence down in their journal as well, and make the corrections, whether it be with commas or spelling or capitalization. So while I'm taking attendance and doing the paperwork, I'm maximizing that five minutes; and I've got the students coming in focused right away that the first five minutes is as valuable as any block period of time. And it's as valuable as the last five minutes of the class looking at how you take care of absences with classroom management; how you move transitions.

Organizing Classroom Movement During Class Time BY: TROY HENDRICKS Because one of the keys that we found in a 90-minute block is movement, is organized classroom movement. So that it doesn't become chaos, you need to

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structure your movement in making sure that there's a purpose in everything that you do. So transitions allow you to build that. So when I'm moving from—say I'm moving from grammar, commas into literature instead of just stopping and making an abrupt break in there, I'll transition the students out of the grammar into the literature. And, again, I may use something, a technique, that we call a sponge activity or a transition activity, where I may give them something to think about as they're putting away their grammar book and taking out their literature book. Or I may give them a prompt question to lead us in—a general question to lead us into the literature to make a connection. So the transitions are valuable as well. Student movement, a big key because to have them—and, again, all you have to do is for yourself sometime is to try to sit for 90 minutes. And I often talk to people and joke when I'm doing workshop presentations; and it's, "How many of you have ever sat through an hour church service?" And you start looking at your watch and thinking, "Um, his service is going a little long today." Well, that's what the kids are doing the same thing in their chairs. It would be younger kids, a little bit shorter attention span. And you try to develop the attention span a little bit more. My seniors, they can sit for a longer period of time; they can sit and stay on task. My freshmen, I need to specifically create student movement in my classroom for my freshmen; but it needs to be organized student movement. I call it sometimes "organized chaos." So one of the things that I do with my freshmen is I teach my freshmen how to move. So I give them my expectations. So we may be doing something that I developed this year instead of my lecturing on the grammar, because as soon as I start lecturing on the grammar, I know that 90 percent of my class tunes me out. And they just sit there and think, "Okay. I'll just read it and look at it from the book. I'm not really listening to Mr. Hendricks." So I don't do that anymore. I have what I call grammar groups, and it consists of four or five students. When I say, "Get in your grammar groups, and I want you to read through the rules of how to do commas appropriately for a sentence together as a group. And you have to read through the rules. Then I want you to do the exercise as a group. And one of you in the class. . ." And I give them each a role to play. And it's a cooperative learning strategy that I'm using. And I give them different roles. One of them is to record the sentences and the proper use of the comma. Then they bring that up to me. And I look at that

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paper. And if it's fine, I send them back and say, "Good job," and maybe move them on to something else or give them something to do while the other groups are finishing up. A lot of times I'll give a newspaper to the group and say, "Here, I want one of you to pick a newspaper article out and read it." Sometimes I'll have the National Enquirer because they love articles out of that. So some of the groups, you know, look forward to that, you know, that ability. I say, "Okay. You can pick one article out of here to read to your group while the rest of the groups are finishing up." But if there's a mistake, I'll simply look at the paper and say, "This is not correct. You need to go back as a group and figure out what's wrong." I will not tell them which one's wrong or which one that they need to correct. So they need to go back as a group and make that, you know, make that correction. So then they have to sit down and go through each one of them again and try to find the correction. So I'm incorporating teaching strategies into my movement as well. So when we're doing classroom management, talking about, again, movement that needs to be there for younger students, we're talking about transitioning from one theme or one task to another task; how to create and use all of that time efficiently. And, again, then you realize that you really can accomplish more in a 90-minute block than you can in two or three 50-minute periods. So actually, you know, gaining some time when it comes to that.

Incorporating New Teaching Strategies Into Your Lessons BY: TROY HENDRICKS And then when we talk about the teaching strategies, and we look at the teaching strategies, one of the things that we did to begin with, with the block scheduling, is there were 30 of us that kind of volunteered to get together just in the morning and start reviewing and looking at teaching strategies. Many of them we used in our classroom; they just had put new names on them. So we began to look at the different teaching strategies. We paired up with a partner. And, so, there were 15 pairs of teachers. And we were responsible for researching one or two teaching strategies. So my group, the person that I was paired up with, we had Socratic seminar and jib saw. So we went out and found everything we could on Socratic seminar—all of the theory, all of the ideas. Then what we did is we developed a Socratic seminar lesson plan for our classroom, and we actually

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demonstrated that, we actually did that in our classroom. Then we came back and reported to our colleagues this is what worked, this didn’t work, this is what I would suggest. And we taught each other. And I learned some really neat things from colleagues and thought, “Wow.” I mean, within any high school staff if you just pool the resources and the strengths that are within that staff, I’m convinced you would never have to bring an outside speaker in. Because we really have the tools. The problem is we just don’t get to meet together as a staff a lot of times and sit down and just discuss our ideas. Well, we had that opportunity to do that and, so, I learned some really neat teaching strategies from my colleagues. One of the things that I can remember the most is a social studies teacher, Cynthia Jones, had simulation. And, so, she presented a lesson on simulation. She taught all of us what she did with simulation. And I had thought, “Well, I use stimulation; but, you know, maybe not quite that way.” So as I watched her and her approach to simulation. . . She did the feudal system in social studies. And she took M&M’s, and she took bags of M&M’s. So as the students came in, each student got a bag of M&M’s. And then she had a random drawing. And each student pulled a piece of paper out of a hat and on that piece of paper was their title. There was one king, there were like four landlords, and then all of the rests were serfs and peasants. And then what she did is she handed them a sheet, and they had to divide their M&M’s up as whatever their role was. So the peasants maybe started off—and I forget the exact count—but maybe like ten M&M’s. And then they had to give the landlord four of those M&M’s. And, so, the landlord had a little bowl and all of the serfs went up and put their four M&M’s—they had to give three or four of them to the king, and they had to give two to the church. And, so, they were left with like two M&M’s; and they’re like, “This is a rip off. This isn’t fair. I mean, how could we do that.” And then the king had a great big bowl in front of him, and then the landlords had, you know, their bowls were pretty full in front of them. And then the church had a halfway decent full bowl. But all of the people had, you know, two left. And that was her point of the injustice of the feudal system and why it, you know, why it wasn’t fair for those who were the peasants and the serfs. And I paid attention to that, and I thought, “Wow, that’s really neat.”

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An Example from a High School Language Arts Class BY: TROY HENDRICKS Now, how can I apply that to my classroom? And then in a couple days I was doing a thematic unit about old age with my—you know, I was teaching English 10 at that point. And I was doing a short story and two poems. And I wanted the students to do a writing exercise on old age. And I thought, "Hum, I could simulate old age for those students." Because I don't want the students to sympathize; I want them to empathize with old age. So I thought, "How could I do that." So I brainstormed with a couple other colleagues of what I could do. And we came up with, Okay. Let the students do it. Let the students brainstorm what they associate with old age; with some of the things that happen, you know, physically. And the students, sure enough, came up with the exact same things that I would have come up with. But they came up with it themselves. So of one of Glasser's theory is that the students remember or learn 95 percent of what they experience themselves. And, so, with that in mind, I thought, Okay. I want the students to experience this. So they brainstormed; and they came up with loss of hearing, loss of eyesight, movement, those different types of things. And I said, "Okay. Great." So I had predicted some of the things that they were going to brainstorm. I said, "We're going to simulate that today." So for arthritis, and they came up with, you know, the hand—I got the biggest pairs of gloves that I could. And the students had to wear the gloves; or, actually, they drew out of a bowl first. And each of them had at least two, two other things associated with old age. So, if they had arthritis, they put these great big gloves on. And I said, "Now, I'd like you to write a note to a friend with those great big winter gloves on." We used earplugs for hearing, we used, you know, distorted glasses for the vision, you know, shuffling for the feet. Or some of them actually were blind. So we blindfolded them. Had a wheelchair that we were able to use and bring in. And, oh, they thought that was hilarious. They had the best time with the simulation. I said, "You know, this is fun; but we need to take a fieldtrip today. So, we're going to walk out through the perimeter of the school." And, I said, "We're going to just walk around, and we're going to take a little fieldtrip." And they looked at me like, Huh. And I said, "Yeah," I said, "I want you to go out and see what it's like to be in public as an old person, not just having fun here with your classmates." So I took them out, and they totally

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changed because people were looking at them and people were, you know, kind of wondering what's going on. I said, "Do you see how an older person feels, you know, when they're out in public; and they have to move a little slower or they can't maybe get something done." So we went through a whole thing of simulation. And, again, I had learned the concept from a social studies teacher. And it totally changed the lesson. I mean, the kids—they understood exactly what I was hoping so that when I asked them to write—because the last thing that they had to do was they had to feed each other. I brought garbage bags in and put a hole in them. And they had to put the garbage bag over—not as much for spills, but I wanted their arms pinned. And, so, I paired them up. And we do another teaching strategy called think, pair, and share. And it's just a clock where there are four appointments on it, and I set these up. And, so, if I need a quick way to get the students together, I'll say, "Get together with your 3 o'clock appointment on your C clock today. That's your partner for the day." And, so, the students look up their clock. They know exactly who their partner for the day is going to be. So I would say that with this simulation, "Get together with your 3 o'clock appointment on your C clock. You're going to feed each other." The first person has to put the garbage bag over the second person. I brought in dry corn flakes, bowls, and a spoon. I said, "Now feed your partner the dry corn flakes." And what I wanted the students to get, and what I was hoping the students were to get—because they were going to do a writing response—which was harder? To be fed or to do the feeding. And I wanted them to, you know, be able to relate to that. And, again, using the simulation, help them understand. Because they experienced it. So then after they had fed each other I said, "Okay, now, I want you take out a piece of paper. And I want you to write on which was harder, to be fed or to do the feeding. And explain your answer why." The writing was totally different. Now, if I would have just started off with that writing project and said, "What do you think is harder; to be fed or to do the feeding and why?" The students would have had nothing to relate to that. But now that they could relate to it—and almost every student came up with—it was almost humiliating to be fed. I wanted to feed myself. I wanted to, you know, to be able to put the spoon to my mouth. And I said, "That's exactly, you know, that's exactly right." So when an older person loses that ability to do something they have had to do their entire life, you can empathize with that. So

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the next time you are behind a line and, you know, an older person is moving more slowly or, you know, isn't as quick as you think they ought to be, understand that. Empathize with them. Don't pity them, but just simply be able to relate to that. Then out of that came probably the best project that I've ever had because the kids enjoyed it so much. When we read the short story, they understood it was—it was a short story called All Flags Flying where an older gentleman decides to check himself into a nursing home. He doesn't want his children to have to do that. So he wants to go out with "All Flags Flying." And he checks himself in. And we talked about some of the things that he would have to give up and why that would be such a hard decision for him. And the kids understood. I mean, the students picked up the theme, they picked up everything in the story right away, because they had experienced it. So by using the different teaching strategies to get the kids to experience what I'm trying to get them to understand in the literature, they grasp the concept quite a bit more. And, obviously, within a 90-minute block, it's a lot easier to do a simulation like that and complete the whole simulation than it would have been for me to try to do it on a 45- or 50-minute block. But the best thing out of that whole project is that the kids wanted to take it a step further. They thought, Oh, this is really neat. What can we do, you know, to do something like that. So we adopted a grandparent. I went out to a local nursing home and said, "You know, I've got a class of English 10 students that would really like to, you know, correspond or would really like to adopt a grandparent." So that's exactly what we did. It happened to be around Christmas time, so the kids made homemade cards for the grandparents, they wrote them notes and things like that. And, you know, I got to take them out and deliver them. And the kids just loved that project. And they extended it further. To me that's true learning.

Why “pray and Spray” Never Works BY: TROY HENDRICKS Not just getting the material, not how much material can I cover. And, again, one time—and I forget exactly who it was. But we had heard before we went to the block when we went to a training workshop, one of the speakers had said the pray and spray method. A lot of times we as teachers do the pray—we spray all of the material out, and we pray that the students grasp and get many of that. And before we went to the block,

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to be honest, I thought, "Oh, wow. She's been in my classroom. She knows how I feel." And that's really how I felt before we went to the block scheduling is that a lot of times I was just—I only had really about 30 minutes of instruction time. So I had to get as much out there to the students as I could and hope that they grasped at least part of the concept. And then the next day I'd come back and say, "Oh, they didn't grasp it. So what am I going to do?" And I'd, you know, just be really frustrated. In the 90-minute block, I can present the concept; I can actually see the students apply the concept; and I can test them to see whether they've mastered the concept or not in that 90-minute time period. So I don't have to feel like I'm rushing through the material. But, again, one of the things that I say at every workshop that I ever present is, "It's not the quantity of the material, but it's the quality that I'm looking for." And the quality that I've gotten by using different teaching strategies, by using the 90-minute block, has made a world of difference in my teaching and I think in my classroom. I was looking forward to the switch. In fact, I basically gave teaching one more year. I had gone through—I had taught in Ohio for five years before I came here to Angola. And even my first year here we were on the traditional seven-period day here at Angola. And there was something missing in teaching. I couldn't explain it. I liked the idea of teaching; I loved, you know, being with the students and getting to know and being a positive influence in that way. But teaching just—it was missing the mark. There was just something missing in that. And I actually sat down with Doctor Bolinger and said, "You know, I love the school. There's nothing wrong with the school. I love the staff, I love the kids. But I'm just not happy with teaching." And he said, "Troy. . ." And I happened to get elected onto the committee that was looking at the block schedule. And he said, "Give it one more year." He said, "Try the block scheduling. Explore it a little bit. See what happens." And he said, "Then let's reevaluate it at the end of next year."

Block Scheduling Revolutionized This High School Teacher’s Class BY: TROY HENDRICKS And after the first year on block scheduling it literally revolutionized my teaching to a point where I come in with a passion now to teach. I come in and I don't look at the 90 minute as a monster. I don't look at it as a difficult thing, but I look

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at it as an opportunity to try new things; an opportunity to work with the kids and to make sure that they get what I'm trying to get across. And, I mean, I can do something in a 90- minute block. I can have the perfect lesson plan all mapped out. And I can have 20 minutes here, 10 minutes here, 30 minutes here, 15 minutes here, 15 minutes here. Have it all mapped out. And the first 20-minute exercise only takes really 16 minutes. The next 10 minute only takes 8 minutes. And I have 10, 11, 12 minutes of flex time where I can do something with the kids that doesn't create as much stress on me to get through the material. And it's taken the tension down on me. And when I'm less stressed, the students become less stressed. So it makes the classroom a little bit more flexible as well. It literally revolutionized teaching for me to a point where—I mean, we've been on the block five years now, and I haven't thought in the five years that we've been on the block about getting out of teaching. Because, I mean, I enjoy it; it's a challenge; I get to add new things. And I really do. I don't feel like the students are just coming through my classroom and it's like a production line and I'm stamping the students as they come in and out and thinking, "Okay. I know I'm not getting through; but I'm just doing my job in getting the students out." I get to build the relationship. In a 90-minute period, you really get to know your students. And by really getting to know your students—their strengths and their weaknesses—I think, again, it makes us better teachers because we can relate to the students a little bit more. We can work on their weaknesses a little harder and capitalize on their strengths as well. So for me it's made the difference of staying in teaching or looking for another profession.

A Parents Perspective on Block Scheduling BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS BY: CRAIG ADOLF I'm the parent of two current Angola High School students and one alumni. My son graduated last year from Angola High School and is now a freshman at Tri-State University in Angola, Indiana. Tri-State and Angola High School formed a partnership when the block scheduling first began several years ago to allow a student to go to Tri-State University and take classes while they were still a high school student here. It also gave the Angola High School students an opportunity to take AP classes, or advanced placement classes that would be able to allow them to test out of

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certain courses at Tri-State when they became freshmen. The workplace participation program grew out of that function of the block scheduling to allow a student the opportunity and the possibility to leave the school during a normal day and become a participant in a business or industry throughout the community. My son became part of the block scheduling as a sophomore and became part of the workplace participation as a junior. Through the experiences and the flexibility of the block scheduling and the workplace participation opportunities, he began the opportunity to choose his major quicker. And when he entered college, he had that major already in focus. He was allowed to take the testing program and test out of, I believe, two classes in college as he entered. And when he became involved in his classroom work, because of the study habits that the block scheduling allows students to incorporate here by being able to ask the questions to formulate their ideas and have the study time while they're in those classes, it put him at least one or two levels ahead of the rest of his freshman class in college. He was offered an opportunity to interview with the Treasury Department as a freshman in college that was normally open to juniors in college. He was 3 of 42 applicants; he was given a year's paid internship with the Treasury Department because of his level of academics being a 3.7 out of 4.0 average in college his freshman year. And he is now embarking on a year's paid internship with the Treasury Department. After he's done with that and he returns to Tri-State to finish his schooling, he then will be offered a full-paid job with the Treasury Department in Washington. As a result of block scheduling, it put our students at a different level when they enter college, because they're at a faster pace of having been immersed in the correct study habits, of being able to ask the questions rather than being hurried through a normal seven-hour structure throughout the day. And they can also become more flexible with real-world skills by being able to leave the school, come back, and then apply those to some of the studies that they're doing. My daughter who is a senior this year has gone through the workplace participation model because of the block scheduling. And she has now chosen her career in the marketing because she's been able to go out and spend time with the hospital marketing director. So I've got two students that are going into college that are focused; that have the education and understand what the study discipline is for them to be successful. The sophomore in high school, when she was in middle school with a

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seven-hour schedule struggled terribly with her education when she became a freshman here and came into the block schedule. She's now in the top ten of her class academically because she can ask the questions she needs to ask. She has the study habits and she has the ability to make her schedule flexible enough that she can pick and choose the classes that she thinks she needs. As a business person, I am the CEO of a 56,000 square foot fitness YMCA and learning resource center. We're the only one of its kind in the world. The relationship that we built with Angola High School has now allowed us to put somewhat of a block schedule in place for people in the industry in real-life work environments to come and take our courses. And as a result of that, we're taking the digital and technology derived between the parent and student in our own community and making it narrower every day. And that's the reason why the block schedule is so successful. I retired from the state police in 1997. And when I retired, we had one computer in the entire state police department that I was from. They still have radios in their police cars from 1972. When I went into the resource center YMCA concept, I was thrust into technology. I can work in an office now that has a computer that I can talk to anybody in the world. I can walk down the hall and sit face-to-face in a videoconferencing area with an 84-inch screen that we can talk face-to-face with anybody in the world. As a result of the partnership that Doctor Bolinger and I formed as how technology would become a part of Angola High School, how then it can become a part of our community. I have CEO companies that are asking to use our videoconferencing area so that the adults no longer have to travel across the United States or across the world. They can now come into our facility. They can do their business and their programming, and they can also learn off of our computers. We have a gentleman who's a business salesperson with Lego out of the Netherlands who toured our facility, saw what we're doing in technology, then tried to take the community to the next level outside of the school agenda. And because of his visit and asking if he can do his videoconferencing back to Lego in the Netherlands, he no longer has to fly to the Netherlands to do his business. He can do it in our building. And their other sales people throughout the world are looking in their communities to find videoconferencing opportunities so people don't have to fly from the United States to Europe who get jet lag, who have family downtime in order to have a two-hour meeting one day and turn around and

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have to do it all over again. What's happened with our community, as we become more technology proficient, we become the model for the State of Indiana; not only in K through 12, but in community development. It's opening up opportunities that within our delivery program that we've offered, a new technology center is being built next to our complex that opens us up to a plastics technology environment that Indiana is the seventh largest producer in the country in plastics development and plastics engineering and component manufacturing. Ball State University is the largest plastics university instruction incorporation in the world. When this facility is finished in October, Ball State then brings their program; and what Tri-State doesn't offer, Ball State will. And as our resource center came together, we have now become an articulated agreement position with * University. And we're one of five junior college campuses in the State of Indiana in their resource center. So what we've done is not only tied education and the community, we've brought higher learning in also to form a partnership with two or three different universities. And the digital divide becomes smaller—because our students and the term "brain drain"—in the State of Indiana no longer will have to leave our community to get a good education outside the K through 12. They can get it here. And, hopefully, it will draw some employers and some manufacturing bases here; and it will leave our children in the State of Indiana instead of going to a different part of the United States to have a better job. So that's how we're trying to shrink the digital divide. The block scheduling also has given an opportunity for students to choose their own path in high school. As a retired police officer, sometimes we tried to put the kids into the areas that we want them to go through education or through society. And when we label those kids, they stay there. Through the block scheduling system, the school here has allowed students to kind of meander through the education system and pick and choose what they feel is best for them. And by the time you're a senior with their core subjects already taken care of as a freshman, they then get to pick their major in life. And it's become more of a college atmosphere here because the student has more flexibility. And I think that what gives a child the ability to come out of school feeling that they're more ready for the outside world. And I think that's one of the plusses of the block.

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A 12 th Grade Student’s Perspective on Block Scheduling BY: ISAAC SEEVERS It has been a definite positive for me at Angola High School. I've been able to take a wide variety of classes, and I've been able to get a lot of classes in in my four years here. I had enough credits as a junior to graduate and something that definitely I credit to the block schedule. I’m a strong student, but I was given a chance to challenge myself through different classes such as the AP courses offered. And I've been able to take three or four of those. And I was able to, through the schedule, take a class at Tri-State to get credit. And, so, the block schedule has opened up a lot of doors for me to expand my education. And, you know, if you can sit through the hour-and-a-half class—and you really get used to it, you know, after you've been into it for a semester. And the biggest worry is people say, "I don't want to sit there for an hour-and-a-half; I'll get bored." But the hour-and- a-half goes by fast. And you don't really notice it. And by the time an hour-and-a-half's done, you know, it's amazing what stuff you can learn in a class period. I think the biggest thing I think is the teachers' involvement with the students has increased. As a junior high student, you know, you weren't allowed to—there wasn't a whole lot of time where we could ask questions about the assignments or, you know, get help and stuff. And you come here and you get an hour-and-a-half and also you've got the last 10, 15 minutes of class to get, you know, a personal one-on-one talk with the teacher, help with assignments. You know, there's more free time during the period to try different things. A lot of times in class we've taught each other and we'll learn something in the first half-an-hour. And then we'll break it down and, you know, we'll teach a certain part of the class. And, so, that opens up a lot of doors to the teacher also, because in all of our classes we've got signs saying how much of stuff that you learn by hearing it, by seeing it. And the amazing thing is you learn the most by teaching it to other students. And, so, that is probably the biggest thing that we've seen that a block schedule is being able to take what we are able to learn in the first half-an-hour, teach it to the students in the second half-an-hour or the last 45 minutes, and learn it all over again. And you're teaching yourself more and you'll remember that. You know, I've been able to go the last half the year for this year and go to factories here in town and explore a job field and see what I want to do. I thought I wanted to be an engineer. And I got into the engineering

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thing, and I didn't like that. You know, so I got into something different; and I didn't like that. So I got into something different; and I think that I've learned through all of it that education is the most important thing. Getting that degree. And you can do whatever you want to after you get that degree because you're continually growing. You know, you think you're a student so you know it all, and you think—and you're just beginning to learn stuff. And I think that's the most important thing that I've learned here at Angola High School is that it's a continual process; that you never finish with anything; you can always get better at something—athletics, drama, education. Whatever it is, you can always get better at it. That's something that our teachers here try to strive. Teachers say, "Don't strive for the mediocrity; excel yourself to be superior. Don't stop at mediocre. Don't stop at the average." And that's the biggest thing. You get a one-on-one relationship with teachers here at the school that's unbelievable. The teachers care about you, and you get to know them on a personal basis. And I think that's the best thing with the block schedule is your relationship with your teachers.

A 9 th Grade Student’s Perspective on Block Scheduling BY: JOE ESSMAN Hi. My name is Joe Essman. I'm a freshman at Angola High School. We moved here from Bryan, Ohio. Actually got up here November 1st. Well, during my eighth-grade year, my parents were really concerned about my education and which high school I would be attending. So we had interviewed, then the same day we interviewed a principal down at Bryan and he showed us around. When we drove up here and interviewed Doctor Bolinger, and it just seemed to be a nicer atmosphere up here with a lot more technology. They had all the potential that the school had, and they did get elected for the New American High School, which is really great. And we did start out driving back and forth every day from Bryan, which is 45 minutes each way—from the beginning of the school year until November 1st, when we finally decided to move up here and got a house. And up here, it's a lot neater with the block schedule because it allows you more time to get homework and studies done and ask the teacher any questions you need. Like in my algebra class our teachers they are willing. And he'll help us with anything we need after he explains

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the subject. Or he'll help us with the homework that we had the night before in order to get that complete and get a good grade in his class. I participated in the workplace orientation program. I did it for 18 weeks; two nine-week courses. The first nine weeks I went to American Roll Form & Manufacturing Company which manufactured bumpers for automobiles. I learned there about the different manufacturing parts and how a business really worked and what was all involved in each person's different job at the place. Then the second nine weeks I went to Tri-State Computer Center, which they allowed me there to work on different computers and help them build them and repair the ones that people had brought in for them. During the workplace program I decided that I would like to own my own business some day, which my uncle has done. He's helped me. You know, he has taught me how to actually run the business and what's involved with all that. And I also have learned that through the workplace program which also will help me with that. The thing I like best about Angola High Schools is the technology they have here; it's outstanding compared to my other school because there was nothing there and here there's so much great stuff and a lot of things to do.

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