Small steps to protect student learning time can have big payoffs.
Two school leaders who have worked to cut down on the seemingly minor classtime disruptions that add up to major lost learning time over the course of a school year—think mid-period intercom announcements, tardy students, and the arrival of staff pulling kids out of the room for individual instruction—explained how they went about eliminating those disturbances and the results they’ve seen during a recent EdWeek virtual event.
Betsy Bockman, the principal of Midtown High School in Atlanta, said the two initiatives that have made the biggest difference were exempting classroom teachers from morning duty—like greeting students at the main entrance when they arrive for the day or monitoring gathering spaces before the first bell—and instituting a bell-to-bell ban on cellphones.
Cellphones, specifically, “are a huge time waster,” Bockman said, and the school’s ban has freed up time teachers were previously using to address students’ misuse of their devices or device-related distractions.
And taking morning duty off teachers’ plates has allowed them to be prepared to start class right on time, Bockman said. To make it work, “just about everybody else” takes care of those responsibilities—from social workers to counselors to administrators to media specialists.
“It’s a time saver for teachers, but it’s also a relationship builder for everyone else,” Bockman said. “The kids see us and see that we’re here for them, too.”
Support staff also take charge of running test retake sessions and monitoring small groups of students who need extended time on assessments and assignments.
Additionally, every teacher has a “designated support person” they can reach out to at any time for help. Teachers can text or message their DSP, as they are called at Midtown High, and that colleague can step in and address violations of the cellphone policy or other behavioral problems without the teacher having to stop class, which protects instructional time, Bockman said.
Getting support staff on board with these responsibilities starts before they’re even on the payroll, she said.
“When I hire support staff, I’m just very clear that it’s a huge part of the job … and that our job is to support teaching and learning, and support teachers and students in any way possible,” Bockman said.
Schools need to use time intentionally
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.
Each campus determines how to use that block—one school noticed math achievement scores were lagging and dedicated the time to additional math instruction, for example.
The intent, she said, was to build in more time for intentional instruction without lengthening the school day or school year, which can be a tough sell to families and teachers alike.
“As we put in these things … we have seen consistent growth across the board with our students,” she said.
Avoiding intercom announcements can save lots of time
Bockman and Cowles’ experience with students missing out on hours of learning time every school year is more common than some might expect—and backed by research.
Sarah Novicoff, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, has conducted extensive research on the effects of classroom disruptions on teaching and learning.
Novicoff and her colleagues have found that small, avoidable disruptions in a typical school can add up to the loss of up to 20 days of instructional time every school year.
That includes both the time taken up by the interruption itself and the time it takes, on average, for teachers to get their class back on track afterward, Novicoff said.
School leaders should encourage their staff to use intercom announcements as a last resort when trying to share messages intended for a small number of students, Novicoff said.
Instead, schools can consider sending the student’s teacher a message on their phone or computer that they can relay during a break in instruction.
“There’s no need to disrupt the education of hundreds or thousands of students to make an announcement that only affects one of them,” Novicoff said.
