Block days regarded as luxuries at DHS

Naomi Kibrya, 15, prefers late start Wednesdays out of the two block days at DHS. ‘’I have all my easier classes, so the entire day is pretty much a swift breeze,” she said. Kibrya is loaded with an incredible amount of homework, so block days give her a more extended time to get all her homework finished, or to get ahead on assignments.

Gaston Avila, 15, cherishes the lengthened time he gets to sleep in every Wednesday; it makes him more rested to prepare for yet another school day. Besides the amount of sleep, ‘’I enjoy having block days because it relieves [the] stress… of having more classes to worry about.’’

On block days, students with schedules like Avila can anticipate getting out of school early which somehow tends to make the day go by quicker. Avilia prefers Wednesdays because he enjoys all his even classes: ‘’I especially love Spanish for how the atmosphere in that class is so relaxed, and I have all my good friends in there.’’

“Having extra time to get yourself ready and on your way leads to a pretty good day for the starting of the week,’’ Eleanor Neagley, an English teacher at DHS said. Neagley is thrilled to have two block days because, being a teacher, these days give her lots of extra time to get ready to teach her lessons.

A great advantage of block days is that students and teachers only prepare for half of their classes. Though ‘boring’ classes are extended on some days, teachers like Neagley find the longer periods a good way to have one on one time with a majority of students.

Although students have extra time to get to school on Wednesdays, Neagley still finds many students are late to their first period of the day. She assumes kids overestimate the amount of time they have in the morning, and don’t plan ahead to get to class on time.

Other cons to the block period, according to Neagley, are that if students miss one of the block days, they tend to miss a lot more work and can fall through the cracks if they do not caught up.

‘’Getting out at 3:30 p.m. every day for five days a week would just be ridiculous and too much pressure. “Having Wednesday and Thursday for getting out at 2:30 pm makes life less complicated,” Principal Jacquelyn Moore said. She believes that with the amount of homework students usually get, block days give students more time to have social lives including, ‘’friends, family life or any other activities.’’

Kundan Malik, a student at DaVinci, has a positive outlook on block days. ‘’Block days give me a reasonable amount of time to focus on my outside school life. For example, I get enough… time to get a couple of hours to do community service to fulfill my college requirements,’’ Malik said. She strongly agrees with this system of schedule at both DHS and DaVinci.