I've always wondered what it would be like to run into major scheduling conflicts in the classroom. What are we supposed to do when we unexpectedly find ourselves very short on time that we actually need in the classroom? Recently, I've ran into several instances of this in my placement and I thought I would just share them here for whomever it may interest.
Our class has a set schedule for when the students should receive vocabulary and when they will be tested on it. The students operate under this assumption and it can be problematic if the regular routine is suddenly broken. Lo and behold, several weeks ago, the routine was very much interrupted. Students were expecting, and preparing for, their vocab quiz as well as a unit test on romanticism to follow. On this particular morning, we were informed by a faculty member that they would in fact be spending the class period on career aptitude tests on the computers in the library. Now, many students had already put in much hard work studying for these assessments, and suddenly that all seemed to go to waste. There was also another problem. It was Friday. The tests had to be rescheduled to Monday, but that left two free days for teenagers to be teenagers and freely forget all of that studying that may (or, let's face it, may not) have been put into preparing. It didn't go as well as it could have, and it seemed apparent that the change in schedule was likely to blame for the downgrade in student performance.
Now, on to another little anecdote. Recently, we have been working on a persuasive essay in class. A problem arose on the last major assignment that required us to take some severe actions against plagiarism, and the students were required to work on their rough drafts only in class, turning them in each day to make sure the work was really their own. The problem arose that many students were simply much slower in the writing process than others and more class time needed to be allotted for writing. These extensions had to continue more than once. This has lead to a point where some of the material that was meant to be covered earlier has now been pushed back. While it hasn't caused any problems yet, who is to say what might happen toward the end of the semester when parts need to be rushed through in order to make sure all of the required material is covered? It's an interesting scenario to me, as I've wondered before what might need to be eliminated from lessons when there just isn't enough time to cover everything that needs to be done. My CT seems to be handling it pretty well, though I'm sure I'd be more than a little frustrated at this point.
