Flex Mod to come in 2018-19 school year
October 17, 2017
By EMMA SCHULFER
The Mirror reporter
Flex mod is a new scheduling program that will begin in the 2018-2019 school year. The program offers flexible class times and varied student groupings. The schedule is based on mods of time 20, 40, 60, or 80-minute class times. Classes can meet any number of days per week and for different numbers of mods each time.
The teachers have already been introduced to the plan and knew that it would be implemented in the 2018-2019 school year. A brief meeting was held Wednesday, Oct.11 to review the flex mod information.
There are several staff and students a steering committee including Sue Strehlow, Dena Mercer, Anne Panko and Jen Melville.
Flex Mod helps students become better prepared to handle college or any other post- secondary schooling because of the individual learning time and group class times and daily schedule changes.
Teacher collaboration will take place because of the mixture of large group classes, labs, and small group mods. Since students might attend large group lectures together teachers must plan so that course content, delivery and assignments are in alignment. When co-teaching is part of the school, teachers have more opportunity to speak and collaborate with each other.
Some schools in the state of Wisconsin already using flex mod are Sheboygan and Pulaski high schools.
Student Vinnie Fonti said, “I don’t like that idea. It is good already. It would be very confusing and a very big change and I don’t want to go to a class for 75 minutes.”
Elizabeth Anderson, a member of the SPASH faculty, is looking forward to flex mod. Anderson said, “I’m very willing to try it and the staff here at SPASH are willing to learn as well.”
Erin Thomas said, “I am not looking forward to flex mod. It feels like I’m being deprived of my high school experience. Why run a college schedule if we’re still in high school?’’
Student Travis Wilkinson said, “It gives me time to do my work and ask questions if I need to. It also will be less stressful for teachers because they won’t have to cram a lab into one single 50-minute class period.”
Nathaniel • Mar 14, 2018 at 2:51 PM
For myself I think I would enjoy the flex-mod schedule. I would enjoy how the days of the week would be different and not so repetitive like they are now. However with that being said I would be worried about teachers not communicating with each other about the curriculum so that they are all on the same page. I definitely think that overall the flex mod scheduling is a really good idea that students would benefit from.