Small steps to protect student learning time can have big payoffs.
Two school leaders who have worked to cut down on the seemingly minor classtime disruptions that add up to major lost learning time over the course of a school year—think mid-period intercom announcements, tardy students, and the arrival of staff pulling kids out of the room for individual instruction—explained how they went about eliminating those disturbances and the results they’ve seen during a recent EdWeek virtual event.
Betsy Bockman, the principal of Midtown High School in Atlanta, said the two initiatives that have made the biggest difference were exempting classroom teachers from morning duty—like greeting students at the main entrance when they arrive for the day or monitoring gathering spaces before the first bell—and instituting a bell-to-bell ban on cellphones.