Opening Up a Daily 40-Minute Block in a North Carolina High School 

In this article in Principal Leadership, North Carolina educators Chris Bennett and Chris Blanton describe the challenge that a 1,075-student high school faced trying to provide tutorials, remediation, and other interventions for struggling students, many of whom were not available after school because they took part in after-school activities or needed to catch a bus home. The school’s response is Bulldog Block, a 40-minute intervention period within the school day, from 12:52 to 1:32 each day. Bennett and Blanton say that the block has been responsible for boosting academic achievement in the school, putting it in the top tier in the district.

Here’s how it works. Students with D or F grades are required to attend tutoring or catch-up classes (these students made up 12-18 percent of the study body) while the remainder of students choose from a variety of activities:

• Tutorial help for students with marginal grades;
• Small-group support for students in demanding courses to solidify concepts;
• Teacher-led review sessions;
• AP class meetings outside a lab setting;
• Advanced Placement Week once a year in which teachers discuss the expectations in AP courses;
• Meetings with counselors;
• Clubs and study groups meeting in the media center, cafeteria, and open classrooms;
• School-based enterprises run by occupational students, including advertising, keeping track of money, and the Exceptional Children’s Program;
• Intramural sports in the gym;
• Chatting in the hall or a common area.

Teachers who aren’t leading activities with students meet with their PLC or cover duty stations around the school.

“When releasing more than 1,075 high-school students for a 40-minute block of time within the school day, planning must be precise,” say Bennett and Blanton. Here’s what they’ve learned from implementing Bulldog Block:

• Consult with staff to solicit suggestions for fine-tuning the program.
• Explain the program to students and parents and establish tiered consequences for students who “go rogue” during the block.
• Post teachers around the building during the block to prevent students from leaving the campus, getting into trouble, or going into unauthorized areas.
• Rotate content-area subjects for each day of the week so teachers in each subject get a fair opportunity to spend focused small-group time with students.
• Phase in Bulldog Block options for ninth graders – they remain in a regular class for the opening weeks of school (rotating to a different subject each day) and then have increasing freedom to take advantage of all the block options.

“Bulldog Block: Creating Additional Time for Students” by Chris Bennett and Chris Blanton in Principal Leadership, March 2016 (Vol. 16, #7, p. 10-12), no free e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #627