The year 2020 brought many changes to Judson, including the five by five period schedule.

The advantage of this schedule was to offer students an accelerated learning experience, while also allowing them to attend STAAR remediation classes, recover lost credits, and still participate in electives.

Though this scheduling had its advantages, after the 2023-24 school year, Judson High School will transition from the five by five schedule back to a seven period day, leaving many students and teachers anxious about how this will work, due to shortened class time each day. 

Based on STAAR test scores from the last few years, district decided that having seven periods may be in students’ best interest. 

“There are many factors involved in a decision like this. We looked at STAAR data over time, and wanted to see how many kids were getting enough instructional time during their classes,” Principal Mendoza said. 

“The argument for the seven period schedule is you get more instructional time over the course of the school year to get into the curriculum. Ultimately the district felt that we weren’t getting what we initially wanted out of the five by five, as far as the number of kids who were successful on the STAAR exam. There wasn’t enough growth in that area and we felt that spending that extra time throughout the year was going to help our kids be more successful on the STAAR test,” Mendoza explained.

Principal Mendoza emphasized that reverting back to the seven period day aides students by not only giving them more time to retain the curriculum, but also allowing them to have a consistent school year. 

“You’re going see your teachers everyday establishing routine and more consistency,” Mendoza said. “Another benefit to this applies to students coming to or going from Judson High School. This scheduling matches with neighboring schools making transcript transferring and adapting easier for those students,” he added.

What will the change look like?

 Though this scheduling may be new to some people here at Judson, many students and teachers have already experienced this scheduling type and know that it just takes time management, while learning to adjust. 

“I teach both AP and standard government, in which the new schedule will affect both in opposite ways,” Government teacher Mr King said. “For my regular government students, it will give us more time, going from a nine week course to a full semester, allowing me to dive deeper into the subject. For AP it means less time, which will be a little more challenging, however it will make scheduling for students in practicums, or extra curriculars easier since there will be more space in their schedule.”

Many students are concerned that their practicums and sports will be affected due to this transition, however principal Mendoza and dental assistant teacher Mrs. Nichols, who’s taught many years on this scheduling, assures students there’s nothing to worry about. 

“The new schedule doesn’t affect my class. It is by TEA that the practicum classes must be a year long anyway, so the only change will be that the class will now be triple blocked to make up for lost time,” Nichols clarified. “The classes that feed into the practicums will also change, going from a semester class to a full year class. This will help, especially in our department, to strengthen the foundation for the professionals of tomorrow.

Who will this new scheduling affect and what should students keep in mind?

After speaking to many extra curricular and productive pathway teachers, this scheduling will mainly effect the hands on classes due to the shorter class periods.

“I do the grooming pathway where we groom and treat the dogs and in our current 90 minutes, we can do from three to four dogs. When we go to the new class period, we might only be able to do one to two dogs a day, cutting off hands-on experience per day,” Agriculture Science teacher Mrs. Oliver said. 

Though time each day will be cut, there are reassurances that each CTE course will still offer many opportunities for experience, it’ll just be broken up to fit the time and curriculum.

“As far as class time, the classical scheduling may not hinder that as much, but we won’t have as much time to get hands-on experience per day. The learning will have to be split up, and they won’t get as much diversity with grooming dogs per day, making it to where we’ll have to split the learning into two days. Some kids will adapt and others won’t,” Mrs. Oliver said. 

Similar to grooming, automotive learning conflicts with the seven period schedule due to the daily time cut as well. The five by five offers more time to dress out, prepare, work on cars, clean up and dress back in, while reverting to the old schedule will call for a higher sense of urgency. 

“At the last school I was at where we had the seven periods, we didn’t get to do any big projects, like building a motor. We had to, and will have to do smaller projects,” Automotives teacher Mr. Thomas said. “There is a possibility that my class, and many others like mine will be double stacked, giving us less time than now, but more time than the single block, it all depends on scheduling, however, whatever the school mandates is what I will do,”. 

If your chosen CTE class or fine arts class turns out to be single blocked, students may be encouraged to stay after school to get that extra hands-on experience or time in, an option that will help make up for lost class time.

 Principal Mendoza explained that the CTE classes are at the core of the discussion, and the concerns have been thought about thoroughly.

“Our students are going to have to be on ‘Q’ [P’s and Q’s] with their credits to be able to qualify for a double blocked class. If they’re trying to get a double blocked class, but aren’t handling business now, losing credit may result in them not being able to qualify for that agriculture, automotive or band class,” Mendoza said. 

How does the seven or eight schedule help me as a student?

For high productivity classes like our core classes, the seven period schedule will help students when it comes to retaining the information. 

Students are often heard to complain that because of how long classes are, it’s harder for their attention to stay engaged. Hopefully with this transition, that grievance will be no more. 

“Not sure if it’s the COVID affect or the five by five affect, but it seems to me that it’s been harder to see that my students are retaining the content, and I attribute a chunk of that to the fact that they’re in class for 90 minutes. About halfway through, students get more tired and it’s easier to disengage, being that they’re in class for a long amount of time,” Mr. King said. “This transition will definitely help in that department.”

In addition, because of the five by five, there are seniors who haven’t had a math class since sophomore year, and are perplexed when they have to take math tests like the TSI and ACT. 

The transition will bridge this gap and allow the information to stay fresh in students minds for these tests.

“The schedule change will be beneficial because it’ll allow student to stay in a math class all year long,” Math department chair and Statistics teacher, Ms. Valenzuela said. “Now with the five by five schedule, some students have math in the fall and don’t have a math class again until the following year in the spring, which is where we see that loss of learning from the previous math class,” she continued.

 Not only does this classical scheduling help students academically, but it will also could build time management skills and responsibility as students learn to cope with some of the challenges that come with it.

“You have a shorter amount of time in class, so you have to start right away to get the days work done. For the kids who like to walk around the halls, this won’t be ideal for them. Because we will have a shorter time in class, some days teachers may not get through the lesson and students may also have to take homework,” Ms. Valenzuela said. “This schedule format could improve student behavior seeing they have less time in each period to roam and disengage.” 

Is a seven class day really that bad?

Returning back to the seven period day has its challenges, like many things in the professional world, but also has many positive factors that’ll help both students and teachers.

How this scheduling effects everyone depends on how they adapt and manage. 

“As someone who’s been in this for 15 years and has a medical background, we are taught to be flexible. We don’t get to choose who comes to us and you have to be flexible enough to ‘go with the punches’ sometimes. Judson always had the seven period schedule, if anything we’re just going back to what most of us are use to,” Nichols said.  

For the students who are still concerned about how this schedule will affect them and their scheduling, talking to a counselor about your fall semester schedule is encouraged, to make sure it’s in your best interest.

 Principal Mendoza assures the Judson community that the change won’t be very drastic and with time, will come with ease. 

“Be patient. Change is always uncomfortable at first and once we find our rhythm and routine it’ll be like nothing ever happened,” Mendoza said.