In the first few weeks of school, returning students noticed a shift in the class schedule, most notably that the 30-minute Conference period now begins at 10:30 a.m., and not roughly an hour earlier, as it did last year and the year before.
This new schedule comes on the heels of the larger schedule change made in 2017, when the School lengthened its 45-minute classes to 70 minutes. Mr. Deron Chang, Director of Curricular Initiatives, was a driving force behind this year’s tweaks. “We knew when we instituted the first iteration of a long block schedule that we would need to revisit it,” he said. “You can almost never be sure about a schedule until you actually live it.”
Some students have speculated that the School moved Conference to later in the morning so that students could no longer use the block to extend a sleep-in. Mr. Chang said this assumption isn’t true. “The primary reason for us moving Conference was that it made very little sense for us to have a break after only one block,” he said. “We want to avoid a situation in which students have three consecutive classes.” The later Conference block may also help alleviate lunchtime crowding by providing a longer early lunch slot.
Since classes began, students have debated the schedule revision. Many miss the opportunity provided by an earlier Conference block to grab breakfast when it was still relatively early in the morning. Alex Nam ’21 said, “We did ask for more time during the lunch period, but if you don’t have early lunch, it’s just an awkward 30 minutes. The placement is very awkward compared to last year when students could get breakfast.” Although that option no longer exists — and students who want to eat breakfast need to do so before classes begin at 8:00 a.m. — the School has agreed to provide bagels throughout the day in both the Dining Hall and Lanphier Café.
The other changes to the daily class schedule include flipping the early and late lunch blocks from the previous year and creating a flexible block on Wednesday for form, Wellness, adviser, and College Counseling meetings from 10:30 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. The campus as a whole seems amenable to these relatively small adjustments.
