This commentary describes the limitations of 40-minute class period times. The forty-minute system makes hash of the lives of teachers, especially in small schools, and about 80 percent of high schools have fewer than two hundred pupils. These small schools crowd their forty-minute periods with as many diverse and unrelated activities as possible,…

In the middle of the author's doctoral coursework in the spring of 2002, he had a discussion with the head of the upper school at Montclair Kimberley Academy (MKA) (New Jersey) about a potential dissertation topic that would benefit their community. In no time at all, the conversation turned to the daily schedule. In August 2004, the author…

About 20 years ago, a number of Yukon schools took a different approach to outdoor education and outdoor pursuits. During the 1970s and 1980s, most Yukon high schools and junior high schools offered a course called Outdoor Education. These courses fit into the conventional blocks in a school timetable. Outdoor activities longer than these blocks…

A strategy used by many principals to gather classroom information and frame that interaction is the classroom "learning walk" or "walk-through." The walk-through can be defined as a brief, structured, nonevaluative classroom observation by the principal that is followed by a conversation between the principal and the teacher…

This report describes the importance of redesigned high schools to engage full high school communities in the deliberate rethinking of virtually everything, ranging from how time is used, to how adults are deployed, even to the "places"where learning occurs. Essentially, redesigned high schools: (1) have high expectations for all…