By Sophia Liao ’25
For the first time in five years, Choate’s daily schedule has received a makeover. In the spring of last year, the School announced a new schedule featuring a later start, longer lunch blocks, shorter classes, and an extended Thursday schedule with advising blocks at the end of the day.
The process of creating the new schedule began with a committee led by Director of Curricular Initiatives Mr. Deron Chang. The committee’s goal was to craft a schedule that would more efficiently optimize students’ time and prioritize their wellness.
“We were doing a good job, but we weren’t doing as much as we could be doing to really address the students’ wellness needs,” Mr. Chang said. “One way to do that is to check if the pace of life that the daily schedule affords is one that is healthy and that allows for the long term health and sustainability of our students.”
The committee discussed feedback from students, faculty, and parents about the schedules before and during Covid-19, considering different prototypes of the daily schedule. Some scrapped ideas include varying class time based on discipline, day of the week, or grade level; shortened transition periods between classes; and a 30-minute sleep-in with classes beginning at 8:30 a.m. After a year of planning, the committee finalized the schedule with five key changes.
One of the most prominent changes to the schedule was the later start time in the mornings. Last year, the school day began at 8:00 a.m.; however, students are able to enjoy an extra 15 minutes in the morning with classes beginning at 8:15 a.m. this year.
For day students like Kayla Bashawaty ’26, this change has been convenient. “The extra 15 minutes makes it much easier to commute to school every morning without rushing as much as I did last year,” she said.
Boarder Bladen Hawthornthwaite ’24 agreed that the later start has made an impact on her morning routine. “Even though it’s only 15 minutes, it makes a huge difference,” she said. “It has definitely enabled me to get breakfast more often, and I can get up at 7:50 a.m. and still make it to class on time.”
While students are enjoying the extra time to sleep in, “changing the schedule by itself isn’t going to fix the sleep issues on this campus,” Mr. Chang said. He emphasized that students should not see this added 15 minutes as a reason to sleep later, but instead as “a nod that ‘you need more sleep at this school.’”
Lunch periods have also been extended with the new schedule. “Longer lunch blocks are so nice because they give me time to go to the mailroom, sign out if I need to, and actually sit down to eat,” Hawthornthwaite said.
Some students have utilized the extra time as free time: “Although the 10 extra minutes is nice, I’m not spending that extra time eating lunch, because I had enough time before,” Max Lo ’25 said. “Now, it just feels like I have some more downtime.”
In order to allow for longer lunches and morning sleep-ins, classes have been abridged from 70 to 65 minutes each. Some students feel that it has taken away from class time that could be spent reviewing homework and asking questions. “With five minutes less, I feel like we’re hurrying through everything, and we barely have time to go over the things I have trouble with,” Lo said.
Another concern with shaving five minutes off class times is that classes may feel more rushed without allowing students ample time to settle in. “In the 70-minute block, you didn’t have to start right away talking about what your subject is,” Mr. Chang said. “It gives you a chance to touch base with students, and we were afraid that that was the part that would be sacrificed.”
So far, shortened classes have not affected how teachers approach lessons. “Because it’s just five minutes, there haven’t been substantial curricular changes because of this schedule change,” said Science teacher Mr. Will Morris. However, teachers may have to make slight moderations to their assessments and class discussions to fit the allotted class time.
Another notable change has been the new advising system. Advisory groups are now mixed between genders, day and boarding status, and grade level. Students also sit by advisory group during School Meeting in Colony Hall, which has gotten rid of sections of the auditorium previously designated to specific forms, such as the “senior section” in the front of the orchestra. In past years, Community Service day activities were completed by dorm, but this year, students were grouped with their advisory instead.
To emphasize the importance of advising to the Choate experience, a time slot has been carved out for advising every Thursday afternoon in the new schedule. “We really consider advising to be one-third of the three-legged stool here: we have academics, co-curricular activities, and advising,” Mr. Chang said. “To have it be the only thing that wasn’t specifically scheduled in really made us wonder, ‘Are we really as committed to the advising process as we thought we were?’”
Head of Student and Academic Life Ms. Jenny Elliott, said, “I hope that a regular advising block will lead to more consistent and stronger relationships between advisers and advisees, and certainly just provide regular access to advisers.”
For some students, however, the advising period has had the opposite effect: “It feels more like family when you’re seeing [the advisers] in the dorm,” Lo said. “I’m spending time outside of classes just to be there [in the advising block], when I’d prefer to be in my dorm relaxing and meet with them on my own time … it all just feels a bit forced.”
On the contrary, for Leanna Robie ’25, the new advising block feels “intentional”: “Even though I lived in the same dorm as my adviser last year, it was always a catch-them-if you-can type thing, where I’d only really see them if they were on duty. Having definite times to meet each week means that I’m guaranteed to see them, which is always nice,” she said.
To accommodate the new advising block, the entire Thursday schedule has been moved up. The Thursday conference period from the previous schedule was cut out completely, and the Thursday sleep-in is 20 minutes shorter than it was last year, with classes beginning at 9:00 a.m.
However, some students miss having daily conference periods, which allowed them to catch a break in the middle of a busy day. “I really liked all the conference blocks we had last year because it felt like we had more downtime to sit in Lanphier or in the [Humanities] rotunda,” Robie said. “I’d also have more time to prepare if I had a test next block or just decompress after a hard class.”
Mr. Chang plans to evaluate how well the schedule has been working by checking in with the Student Council this fall. He will also do a more in-depth evaluation next year, “allowing everyone to have lived with it for a full school year cycle.”
