Decoding the Master Schedule: Analyzing Course Offerings, Choice, and Length to Uncover Educational Values

A school's master schedule speaks volumes about its priorities. It reveals how the school decides to allocate the time of students and staff and what it values most in education.

For example, a school that prioritizes test scores and academic achievement may require more instructional time for core academic subjects and less time for electives. Students who require additional support to improve their academic performance may get double the time in ELA or math. In contrast, a school that values a more "well-rounded" education may prioritize a wide variety of elective options for students to choose from, even for students who struggle academically.

Another way is to look at the type or length of courses offered. In schools that prioritize deeper learning and the development of essential skills, you will likely find courses with integrated curricula. They may offer courses like "GeoDesign," "Biolit," "American Studies," or "Civic Reasoning," with two teachers and more time for students to collaborate. In more traditional schools, courses will typically be of uniform length with titles aligned with specific graduation requirements like "English 9," "US History," or "Biology."

The number of choices offered to students at different grade levels can also reflect a school's priorities. A school that offers a lot of choices early in high school may have limited off-campus opportunities for students later in high school because students don't have as much flexibility in their schedule. A school that values off-campus opportunities may require a more rigid freshman schedule.

Schools that prioritize building a positive school culture or social-emotional learning may provide time in the master schedule for an advisory period to help facilitate restorative circles, mindfulness exercises, or workshops in conflict resolution. Schools without such a period prioritize academic class time and need to push into different subject areas for lessons on culture and social-emotional learning.

Master scheduling is an underappreciated art form. I urge administrators to review their master schedule with a team to ensure that it aligns with the school's values and goals for students. Promoting open dialogue and critical thinking is crucial during this process. If there is a discrepancy between the team's assessment and the school's priorities, changes should be made. The master schedule is a powerful tool to support the school's mission and vision for students. Don't be afraid to make adjustments that align with your school's values. Your students and community will thank you.

Building Strong School Culture with Crew at Handy Middle School

This video features the impact of Crew, as shared by the students and teachers at Handy Middle School. They discuss the improvements they have seen, including increased confidence, better communication, stronger bonds, and a more connected community.

Crew is a unique combination of advisory class and ethos that aims to create a supportive and grounding environment for students as they start each day. During the first 30 minutes of every day, teachers focus on lessons that emphasize social-emotional skills and character-building activities. During these lessons, students reflect on essential skills such as communication, collaboration, and leadership, while also building relationships with their classmates and teachers. The lessons learned in Crew are then practiced throughout the day.

The impact of Crew extends beyond the students to the staff as well. Staff crew meetings provide a space for team building and decompression, allowing staff members to connect, support each other, and refocus on their work.

Creating and maintaining a positive school culture is a challenging but essential task for any principal. That's why I was thrilled to partner with EL Education on the pilot of their middle school Crew curriculum at Handy Middle School. Our goal was to provide the school redesign team with a framework and necessary support to achieve this objective.

This video celebrates the transformative impact of empowerment and the importance of fostering a strong school culture. The use of student and teacher voices to share their experiences highlights the positive impact of Crew and the success it has had in the school community.

Teaching Accountabilty

Last month, at a staff meeting led by Matt Thompson, my team came to the conclusion that we need to close the year focused on accountability.

Here's the gist of the conversation that brought us to this conclusion:

If we are to see our vision of "graduating all students prepared for success in life, college, and career," then we had better do some serious work on accountability.

It was an honest moment of clarity for my group around the challenges that we think we face:

• Some of our students do not hold themselves accountable for their actions. From this group, we hear a lot of excuses and see the slowest growth.
• Most of our students do not hold others accountable for agreed upon responsibilities. When group norms break down, they simply break down.
• We adults struggle with the exact same challenges.

It was the realization of that last bullet that hurt the most for me. As the school leader, I feel responsible for the systems of accountability that my staff and students work within. If our systems of accountability are failing, shouldn't I be held accountable for that failure?

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The next day, I had a routine meeting with our "culture committee" to talk about our goals for next year. At the top of the agenda was to discuss how we would use a school-wide Advisory to improve the culture of our school. Our staff just recently approved reallocating some non-instructional time in our schedule to Advisory. We have approximately 25 minutes to work with every day in every grade.

The driving question for this committee has been "How do we structure a school-wide Advisory program that strengthens school culture without adding additional prep time for staff?"

At the start of the meeting, I brought up this accountability issue we've been experiencing and the group started talking about the evaluation system we use as adults as a possible pathway for teaching accountability to students. Someone suggested that we have students write SMART goals in advisory. Teachers could help students develop action plans and could use Advisory as time for students to collaborate on and share their goals. This, it was argued would provide ample opportunity to teach accountability.

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Out of this discussion came the following three goals for our advisory program next year:

1. All students and staff will create one SMART goal around the topic of personal accountability by the end of the first week of school and accomplish it by the end of April of that year.
2. Groups of all students and staff will create one SMART goal around the topic of accountability to the school community by the end of the first week of school and accomplish it by the end of April of that year.
3. Groups of all students and staff will create one SMART goal around the topic of accountability to the broader community outside of school by the end of the first week of school and accomplish it by the end of April of that year.

Our plan is to structure our Advisory around these yearlong goals, tackling them each on a different day of the week. For example, we might schedule our advisories like this:

• Tuesday: Personal Growth Day – Every learner would spend 25 minutes working on and reflecting upon their personal SMART goal. Is their goal specific enough? How is it measuring up? Are they following their action plans? Will they complete their goal on time? On Tuesdays, teachers (as advisors) would work with students to help guide their goals while also collecting data on what additional supports are needed.
• Wednesday: School Growth Day - Every Advisory would spend 25 minutes working on and reflecting upon their school SMART goal. What specific aspect of our school can each Advisory directly affect? What action steps can each individual in the group take to ensure the goal is met in the time specified. On Wednesdays, teachers facilitate group work toward the achievement of their Advisory's goal.
• Thursday: Community Growth Day - Every Advisory (or groups of Advisories) will spend 25 minutes working on and reflecting upon their community SMART goal. What specific aspect of our community (or the world)) can people in our school directly affect. What action steps can we all take to ensure the goal is met? Etc.

While Mondays and Fridays have yet to be planned, we're thinking that Mondays need to be about making connections - whether through conversations, presenters from outside the school, or through activities - we want to dedicate time to relationships.

Fridays need to be about celebrations. We want to celebrate when individuals and groups meet their goals. We want to celebrate when great things happen. And, we want to just celebrate being together.

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A larger goal, from my point of view, is to engage my staff and students in the same type of work from the top to the bottom. I want to lead a school of action: one where students and staff all set goals, create action plans, and use data to assess success and next steps. I want to be there when we celebrate individuals and groups achieving their goals. I also want to be there to support individuals and groups when their outcomes fall short of their goals.

If the result of this work is nothing more than rooms full of messy conversations about the challenges of meeting personal and group expectations, then I think we'll be successful. That will be many rooms full of messy conversations about accountability more than we have now.