Lockney Elementary School (Alex Driggars/Floyd County Record)
LOCKNEY — Since Aug. 17, the Lockney Independent School District has trialed a novel district calendar incorporating a four-day instructional week. The LISD school board adopted the change during a meeting this summer, designating Mondays as a “fifth day” for teacher planning while school is not in session.
Now, nearly three months since the school year started with the new schedule, Lockney Superintendent Jim Baum is reflecting on its implications so far — and, he says, it’s “pretty overwhelmingly positive.”
Baum says that the added prep time for faculty has led to an increase in depth of instruction.
“As far as teacher planning and teacher preparation, all of the principals have talked about an increase in the quality of what they’re seeing in the classroom,” Baum told the Record. “They’ve actually had time to sit down and evaluate student products.”
The increased depth of instruction resulting from the change is helping teachers and the district realize educational goals.
“We don’t want to just do a bunch of fill-in-the-blank or lower cognitive levels. We want to move up Bloom’s (Taxonomy of Educational Objectives),” Baum said. “Instruction determines the depth of knowledge. If our instruction is at a surface level, then that’s the level of expectation we should have for our kids, but if our instruction starts to go deeper, with deeper meaning, then we’re going to expect our kids to have a deeper understanding. So that’s kind of what we’re starting to see is that teachers have the time to actually dig in instead of just running as fast as they can.”
In addition, students and teachers are able to utilize those Mondays for in-depth tutorials when needed.
“Our teachers are planning academic tutorials for our kiddos who need it on those Mondays, so we’re not having to go to school all day long and then try to do tutorials when everybody’s tired and ready to go home,” Baum said.
That fifth-day flexibility allows for longer and deeper one-on-one instruction, which in many cases also helps with athletic and extracurricular eligibility.
“(The coaches have) tried to maintain the same time of day for practices and all of those things, but they’ve also had an opportunity to come in and make sure that the kids are taking care of their work, so eligibility hasn’t been a big issue for us at all,” Baum added.
Aside from the obvious benefits, Baum noted that there are a few challenges still to work through.
“The pace is definitely faster. We are not reducing what we teach at all, so the pace is much faster,” Baum said. “The days are a little bit longer, which I think for our youngest kids, for like pre-k and kinder, I think it’s been hard on them.”
Baum said that some of the schedule’s other immediate effects were pretty clear, too.
“I think the parents are realizing that it’s not really any less work for anybody. Initially we had some folks that thought, ‘Well you know, now it’s just a four day work week,'” Baum said. “It’s not a four-day work week. It’s a four-day instructional week. Our coaches are still working Mondays, our teachers are still working Mondays, the kids are still working Mondays. It’s just a reformatting of how we’re getting that work done.”
As with any new program, getting past the planning phase and initial implementation can be a hurdle, but Baum says that the new format is solidifying. He says that although there are still kinks to work out, what this plan might look like long-term is starting to come into focus.
“We’re just getting past the logistics part of it, and we’re just getting into the what are the results. So I think everybody still likes the format, but I think we’re still kind of cautiously optimistic what the impact is going to be on the kids overall,” Baum said. “The newness has started to wear off of it and so now its a matter of finding out what it can really do.”
“You get a new performance car or something, and you want to be careful in it until you get the feel of it, and as you get more of the feel, you finally feel more comfortable putting the gas down, putting that pedal down, and that’s kind of where we are right now,” Baum added.
“We’re about to dump the clutch and hammer it.”
