Two school leaders who have taken intentional steps to cut down on classroom disruptions and maximize the amount of time students spend learning are seeing big results.
The leaders said they recognized that seemingly minor class time disruptions—like mid-period intercom announcements, tardy students, and the arrival of staff who pull kids out for individual instruction—were adding up and costing students hours of learning time every semester, a conclusion backed by research. They explained how they went about eliminating some of the routine disruptions and the results they’ve seen during a recent EdWeek virtual event.
Betsy Bockman, principal at Midtown High School in Atlanta, has made it her mission to “protect instructional time” as best she can. In her school, that’s meant placing a “huge focus” on cutting down on students’ tardy arrivals; enforcing a no-cellphone or personal device policy; and taking many of teachers’ extra duties off their plates, like hallway monitoring and overseeing the metal detectors at building entries.
“Our teachers, their main duty is to be in the class at the classroom door greeting kids so that they can start right away,” Bockman said. “We don’t want them rushing in from those duties. I’ve tried to take a lot of things off of them so they are calm and ready to teach kids and focus on their instruction.”
Bockman has instituted a reward system for students with good attendance, and weekly detention for those who are consistently not getting to classes on time. The accountability for being late, and the recognition for good behavior, goes a long way, she said.
Sarah Novicoff, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University who has conducted extensive research on the effects on classroom disruptions, said the efforts are a good step toward ensuring students get the most out of their school day.
Novicoff and her colleagues have found in their research that small, avoidable disruptions in an average school can add up to the loss of up to 20 days of instructional time every school year.
“Every time an intercom rings, yeah, the intercom announcement is maybe 30 seconds long, but it takes a few minutes for the teacher to sort of be able to get the class back on track,” Novicoff said. “Or every time a staff member pops into the room to pull a kid, all of those kinds of little things add up.”
Schools can carve out more time, but they need to be intentional about it
Noble Schools, a network of open-enrollment charter schools for grades 6-12 in Chicago, has in recent years implemented an intervention block for all students in many of its schools, shortening other class periods by just a few minutes to create a new class period that fits into the schedule, said Lyndsay Cowles, the network’s director of academics.
During that time, students can receive individualized instruction like special education or English language assistance, and teachers can focus on spending extra time on teaching concepts students might be struggling with in class, like math remediation.
“Just adding minutes without intention will not work,” Cowles said. “Five minutes spent well or spent not so well will have an impact.”
Cowles and Bockman said their work has yielded results, both concretely in students’ academic performance and more qualitatively in an improved school culture and student engagement.
“We have seen, finally, some academic growth … We are seeing our students thrive. We are seeing our teachers … able to teach again,” Cowles said. “I think the combination of things—just really being obsessive about protecting that time and making sure it’s intentional is key.”
