A Rhode Island School Opens Up an Hour in the Schedule Every Day

In this article in Independent School, Daniel Willingham (University of Virginia) and Vince Watchorn describe how Providence Country Day School in Rhode Island (where Watchorn is school head) decided that its traditional schedule, with 20-minute breaks for clubs, activities, and assemblies scattered through the week, severely limited connections between teachers and students – many weren’t free at the same time. In 2012, this grade 6-12 private school decided to schedule Community Time, a daily one-hour block (9:25-10:25 a.m.) when all teachers and students would be available at the same time. In addition to maximizing student-teacher and student-student connections, Community Time was designed to empower students to make choices and better prepare them for unstructured environments down the road. 

Each block usually begins with a 20-minute assembly or time with advisors. (Longer assemblies, sometimes with guest speakers, take place in Community Time about once a month.) Then students can choose from a variety of activities:

• Student-led clubs;
• One-on-one tutorials with teachers;
• Mini-courses with teachers (among them, cryptography, photography, and learning how to change a flat tire);
• Special programs and visitors;
• Discussion groups on hot topics (for example, the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri);
• Student initiatives (for example, changing the school’s dress code);
• Students presenting to peers on an enrichment activity they’ve concluded (e.g., fencing, Irish step dancing, piloting drones);
• Self-directed learning;
• Open-ended socializing.

Devoting 15 percent of the school day to this – during prime morning hours – is a bold move. “Critics may worry that during this hour the students’ time is too unstructured,” say Watchorn and Willingham, “that the students’ minds are diverted from their studies and that they are too focused on their own priorities or simply being with each other on social terms. For us, however, that is precisely the point.” The goal is creating a “blank page” where “serendipitous learning” can take place, where students can make choices to explore new academic and social areas, pursue individual and group projects, and take advantage of faculty expertise. 

Watchorn and Willingham believe Community Time is an effective way to pursue the often-amorphous goal of preparing students to take responsibility for learning and development after they’ve left the school. “If we really want students to be lifelong learners,” they say, “we must scaffold that attitude and the skills that go with it. We must give students practice in the idea that their intellectual interests can and should be taken seriously, and we must give them practice in using the tools that satisfy those interests in the absence of a ready-made curriculum or a set of required tasks.”

The sacrosanct daily block of open time also sends an important message to students: It’s within your abilities to discover things worth knowing, to pursue them, and to learn about them. The school strongly resists attempts to provide more structure in Community Time and prohibits using it for supplemental coursework, rehearsals, or mandatory test reviews (except for occasional one-time student-led sessions). “We hope and expect that our students will learn the value of setting aside time each day to discover and pursue an intellectual interest, even though it may not contribute to a grade or earn a reward,” say Watchorn and Willingham. 

Allowing students to socialize is perhaps the most controversial part of Community Time, but the rationale is this: just as recess in elementary schools provides social time and a “downshift” from the outer-directed attention system (achievement, adults, grades), Providence School’s daily morning time allows students to focus for an hour on the inner-directed attention system (themselves and their relationships with others), which helps them concentrate better when they’re back in the classroom. 

Introducing Community Time took some serious planning and persuading, and it’s a work in progress, but Watchorn and Willingham say that so far, the results are just what they hoped for: students and faculty enjoy the hour, valuable learning takes place every day, and they believe it fulfills the school’s mission of preparing graduates to be self-actualizing lifelong learners. 

[See Memos 170 and 525 for related articles on unstructured one-hour lunch/activity blocks in large public high schools.]

“Giving Students Their School Day” by Vince Watchorn and Daniel Willingham in Independent School, Spring 2016 (Vol. 75, #3, p. 64-69), no e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #626