4 day school week movement.. gaining traction in conservative areas

Will go the same way as ending daylight savings time -> NO Where.

 

In france

 

I remember that my first chemistry class in high school was taught by a lady with a degree in psychology. It was horrible. All of the quizzes required us to define terms from the textbook without using the term in the definition. There were no lectures or experiments--just reading the textbook and taking quizzes. That was a while back, though.

 

Sometimes they have to use out of area folks in hard to place subjects. Good science teachers are hard to find. Better money in other lines of work.

 

Here is the counter argument to this. The stakeholders are...

1. The teachers
2. The students
3. The parents

Over 90% of the above buy in to the 4 day model after it has been implemented. Students are willing to have longer days knowing they get the 5th day of the week off. And the effect on student performance is negligible. If a 4 day model makes over 90% of the stakeholders happy, and it does not negatively impact learning then why wouldn't you move to it?

And FWIW...if teaching was as great as you make it out to be, then we wouldn't have a teacher shortage. We have a massive teacher shortage. And if we aren't willing to pony up and significantly raise teacher salaries, then the solution is to incentivize teachers in other ways. This is by far one of the best ways to do it.

 

I never said that teaching was great, or that things were fine the way they were. That's why I suggested having more teaching assistants, to make life easier on the teachers, free up some of their time, and give them more of a chance to make their lessons interesting.

 

Gotcha, I was responding to the part about the two 16 hour work days. I should have been more specific about what I responding to. Two 16 hour work days, would not fly for the stakeholders involved. And the test scores would drop. The 4 day school week (still a 5 day work week for teachers), though, gets similar test results based on the data, and it makes the stakeholders happy.

 

My wife is an academic coach for our local HS and while in theory she’s there part time to support the full time teachers, most of the time she’s thrust into a substitute role because of absence and or shortages.

 

I think you’re looking at it wrong. Two days off is a nice restorative period. The problem is that people rarely get two days off. There’s almost always a day dedicated to “work” that isn’t work so a standard two-day weekend is really just one day of relaxation. I’ve found three-day weekends to be the best of both worlds, long enough to relax and do the things I want but not too long to feel disconnected from work where it takes a long time to get back into the swing of things.

 

Yeah. That was more of a joke, actually.