Digital Storytelling 1.5

History
Many schools already have a free period for the students in higher grades. They have to deal with a lot of homework, and this period of time is VITAL for their success. Meanwhile, the idea of a free period to lower grades is that it will alleviate homework load, and this will enable them to get help from teachers easier. The obstacles are minimal, and ones that could arise with some options (such as the protest in cutting class time or taking away electives) could be solved easily: those that want to take electives, can take them during this free period, however they are not mandatory.

Why would people want this?

Students would want this because of reasons that are mostly obvious. Everyone likes to have free time, and this will give them time to do work and be productive. It is their choice to do work or not, however many, and I think most, would take the advantage to do work, or at least talk to teachers. Something that personally bothers me as a student is that there is not “Opportunity Day” every day, something which is a reality in some schools. So, you have to wait some days to go see a teacher after school, and it is tedious to have to take the bus ride home and arrive home so late for help at school. I think that an idea like this, a free period, would help reduce the need to stay after school, and let people arrive home earlier.

The teachers would probably also be motivated by this because it would help their classes a lot. There wouldn’t be a need to give a lot of time in class to work on assignments, since this time would already be there, and virtually the same, with the work being done in school and the teacher readily available. This would mean, then, that the curriculum would finish faster and could possibly leave time at the end of the year without lessons. Or, alternatively, difficult subjects could be covered more thoroughly and there would be more time to learn the subject and get help before tests and other assignments.

The administrators, principals, and other staff members that do not directly teach the student body would have no reason to object. This would, in fact, make the school seem possibly more revolutionary and progressive, since although some schools introduce it later on, none would introduce it from the earliest grades where homework is important (ideally, this free period would start for the 6^th grade onwards).

Parents would probably be happy that the children could have time to work at school. They would see this as something alleviating for their children, something that might even help them get better grades. The parents, I think, would in majority support this.

Survey Results

95% of students would support a free period in the morning (19/20)

5% of students would not support a free period in the morning (1/20)

(The reason was that they thought that teachers would give more homework if they found we had a free period, and there could be even worse problems in homework, especially to those that wanted to take electives.)