The following case study is adapted from a version in "How Boston Pilot Schools Use Freedom Over Budget, Staffing, and Scheduling to Meet Student Needs", Center for Collaborative Education, October 2001. 

   The Harbor School is an Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound middle school in Dorchester, MA.  There are 265 students in grades 6-8.  The faculty consists of 16 core academic teachers and 19 other staff (student support, technical support, specialists, and administrators).  Students and teachers are divided into Grade Level Teams and Crews, or advisories.  This case study focuses on the decisions that led to the school’s schedule, which successfully creates 1) large blocks of time for teachers to collaborate, 2) more core academic instruction time and intensive electives for students, and 3) large amounts of time in advisories, which increases the personalization in the school.

Strengths of the Schedule

   This simple schedule includes class periods of either one hour or two hours.  These blocks of
time are the same for every team and every day of the week; classes are “in frame” with other grade levels.  With regularly blocked times, double periods can be accommodated at any time of day.  Classes meet from 8-3:30 every day except Wednesdays, when students are released at 12:30 so that faculty can meet.  Core academic classes meet five days a week.  Physical education, Advisory, and Language skills meet four days a week.  Double blocks are used for Humanities classes. 

The principal of the school described the scheduling principles:
We didn't want the schedule structure to be the decision-maker in those instructional choices.  We wanted to create a large, flexible block of time for teachers to make choices.

1) Common Time for Teachers to Collaborate

   Four days a week, grade level teams have a double block (two hours) during the school day to plan, collaborate, or prepare individually.  Of those eight hours, three hours are for team collaboration and five hours are for individual preparation.  Throughout the week, collaborative time includes facilitated grade level team meetings once and student study team meetings for behavior and special education issues (including a pre-referral process for academic learning needs) once.  Teams meet while students are with specialists (physical education, computers, and creative writing).  In addition, on the early release Wednesday afternoons, there is a three hour block of time for teachers to meet.  Three Wednesdays a month, the whole staff meets for one hour of that time.  Typically, the remaining time is spent on a rotating basis for the following groups and activities—grade level teams, subject teams, looking at student work using protocols, and externally facilitated workshops focused on school-wide priorities. 
   In addition to the in-school time, the school has committed to two department release days, with classes covered by paraprofessionals, in which teachers of a certain discipline can work together on curriculum planning across grades. 

2) More Core Academic Instruction Time and Intensive Electives for Students

   The Harbor School has a seven hour student day length (average over five days).  The time spent on core academic instruction is four hours.  The amount of time on core academic instruction, which includes Humanities, Science, and Math, is high partly because during most of the school year, there are no courses of choice.  However, electives are still offered.  For two seven-week periods a year, Wednesdays are devoted to electives.  These are teacher-developed, intensive courses of choice for mixed grades.  Teachers volunteer their expertise and passions for this endeavor.  Examples of elective titles include “Lift Ev’ry Voice” detailing the relationship between African American music and African American history, “Motor-vation” introducing students to engine building, and “Students in service for a caring community” designing a community service project.

3) Plenty of Time in Advisories

The Harbor School uses advisories, or Crews, to create smaller groups of students for students to identify with.  Crews create a feeling of community within the larger context of the school and ensure that at least one adult in the building knows each student well, both academically and socially.  Crews meet for two thirty-minute blocks of time four days a week.  Currently, crews stay together for three years.  Half of the advisory time is spent in sustained silent reading.  The other half of that time is spent in community and leadership building activities.  The school is working towards involving all adults in the school in advisories, to bring the student to adult ratio down, improve reach out to families, and spend longer periods of time building community.

Challenges of the schedule

   Traditional Boston Public Schools have a six hour and forty minute school day.  One challenge that the school faces with an 8:00 to 3:30 school day is that it is too long for the students.  They have trouble focusing and staying on task the last two hours of the day.  Staff decided by consensus to explore with BPS reducing the day length by half an hour.  This change would have direct effects on the amount of common planning time, the amount of core academic time, and the amount of time in advisories.  The after school program would correspondingly increase enrichment work with students in most need of extra academic attention. 
   Another challenge of the schedule is that because specialist teachers provide coverage during the grade level team common planning time, specialist teachers cannot meet with core academic subject teachers.  In addition, specialist teachers do not teach all students in a grade level team.  Without the time to plan together and without specialists working with all the kids, it is impossible to create cross-disciplinary curriculum between specialists and core academic teachers.  For example, if all students do not take computer class, they cannot be expected to complete a project involving computer knowledge.