New flex-mod schedule next year
Dear Parents/Guardians of Pea Ridge High & Middle students,
Have you ever had to sit in a day-long meeting? How did you feel afterwards? Exhausted? Frustrated? Perhaps overwhelmed? The stressors of an eight-hour day are tough for adults. Now imagine this, we ask our students to sit through 178 days a year for eight hours a day. Is this truly preparing them for college and “real life”?
Our faculty has worked tirelessly since November to reimagine a school where “time serves kids, not kids serving time.” We believe this newly imagined schedule is called Flex Mod. Several schools around the nation have found success with this new form of “real life” education that prepare students for success post-graduation in a 21st-century world.
The Flex Mod schedule builds quite a bit of flexibility into your child’s school day for:
1) Independent learning time to work on out-of-class reading or homework
2) Collaborate with peers on group projects
3) Meet with teachers for oneon-one remediation
4) Various other activities that will set each of them up for success
Since kids will work on relevant school work outside of their scheduled meeting time, teachers can keep the class moving at a rigorous pace with the new Common Core standards, while still finding time to meet with students who need extra assistance during the school day. Ultimately, this model will allow for more individualized learning and more focused relevant instruction during the day that will allow whole child education during regular school hours.
Of course, we want to ensure all students are suc- cessful with this new model and our staff has been proactive in setting up interventions for those students who initially struggle with their independence in the form of independent learning time. Students will have an assigned teacher who will monitor their grades and teachers will set up appointment times to meet one-on-one with those who fall behind. We are also prepared to place students in a quiet and monitored study commons if the need arises.
The Middle School will offer the same schedule with similar benefits to prepare them for high school, but the students will have more structured time that will focus on character development, interventions and enrichment opportunities.
This is an exciting new change for us at PRHS and PRMS as we seek to develop 21st-century learners. We look forward to any feedback you might have related to this new schedule. Go Black Hawks! Cordially, Jon Laffoon, principal Pea Ridge High School