Why are Jacksonville's high school students taking 7 or 8 classes at a time (rough draft)

I called the University of North Florida and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. That’s just too many classes, she said.

I called Jacksonville University and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. It would be crazy to take that many classes, she said.

I called Florida State College at Jacksonville and asked them what a full time college schedule was. They told me it was four classes. I asked the lady who picked up if I could take eight at a time. At first I believe she thought I was joking. When I assured her I wasn’t she said I would have to get a special override but it was unlikely that I would get permission. I have never heard of anybody ever taking that many classes, she said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell the lady all the students in public high school here in Jacksonville take seven or eight classes at a time. That’s right they all take classes that are either double or close to it, what would be considered full time in college.

Furthermore when I was in college I made sure, if I could, to put some fun class in my schedule. A class I enjoyed not just some hoop I had to jump through to get to the next level. Many of our kids today don’t have that luxury. They are taking eight academic classes at a time. It’s not uncommon for children to have two maths or two Englishs concurrently on their schedule and furthermore some take both a class and it’s prerequisite at the same time. Many students go without electives.

There are undoubtedly some kids who would fail if all they were taking was just one or two classes but at the same time how aren’t we overloading many of the children attending our schools?

It’s not just the amount of classes that they are taking that are holding many of our high school students back either.

High school starts for some as early as 7:10 and this means most students get up much earlier. This is how we have set it up for the group of children that experts say need the most rest. We are doing the opposite of what’s best for them by putting them in a position that assures that in actually they are getting the least. Also if this is the group we want off the streets the most why do we put them back on the streets, in most cases at 2:15, the earliest?

Furthermore classes are way to long. This fast food, video game generation is not programmed to sit in a class for ninety minutes at a time, simply put they don’t have the attention span. Invariably this leads to instruction time being lost in many classes and in more than a few this leads to discipline problems as well. If classes were fifty minutes, coincidently enough the same length as the majority of college classes’, kids would be distracted less and focused more.

If we are determined to keep kids on the block schedule what about switching it back to when children only took four classes at a time. Not only would this stop forcing some kids to take both the prerequisite for a class and the class or two maths and two Englishs at a time but also it would make things fair. The reason that the district switched to an A/B block schedule (eight classes at a time) is so students taking Advanced Placement classes would still be taking them at the end of the year when the tests were offered.

Though and I understand reasonable people can disagree, I think the best schedule is a six period day, with classes that are fifty minutes to an hour long, where each kid would have at least one elective, that starts 8:00 or later. Shouldn’t we give more of these growing kids filled with hormones, who by nature are already sleep deprived, who have short attention spans, many of who have absent parents and live in neighborhoods that don’t care about education, at least, at the very least a fighting chance.

You hear all the time about what parents and the community should be doing and about what teachers should be doing more of. Well what about the system? It currently sets up many high school students to fail or to be mediocre at best. What changes is the system making?