Technolandy

Day 4 (of SOL 2025) Summer of Learning… Dear Dr Kennedy @chrkennedy school day balance

In his annual year end blog, Chris had some good questions… here is question 

4: What is the perfect balance between structure and freedom in a school day?

Keeping it sitmple = the finnish model: 45 minutes of work, 15 minutes of free choice (ideally play)

But what’s not easy is implementing it – school traditional bell schedules are not good for it (so get rid of bells) and supervision is always over-worried about. 

I’ve done this with a classroom. It’s awesome. But it (like any new implementation that impacts and influences behaviours) is not an overnight success. So, much like with prescription medicines, don’t give up too soon – I talk about 7 weeks for meds in my “rant on anxiety” but changes like this only take about 3 weeks to get feedback on – 

• week one has a lot of doubts and pushbacks and tests (is this another thing that we can ignore)
• Week two sees more experiments and conversations around why and what can we do
• Week three and really two weeks + one day shows students this thing might be staying in place for awhile. This is when you can authentically see if it’s a positive for your community. 

And this implementation is good for all interventions. You should never complain that something isn’t working in the first days/weeks. It takes time to practice and push back and see how/if it fits. 

But 45/15 k-12 is a good structure/freetime strategy – then you can talk about #geniushour (more here: https://technolandy.wordpress.com/genius-hour/) so learners have control (that feels like free choice) over what they learn (warning: don’t assign topics or deadlines for inquiry!)

Best structure we (BC focus) need is universal food supports – but tough in Canada with virtually no schools with cafeterias built in – part of why Canada (save for PEI) remains the lone G7 nation without a universal food option for students. Breakfast and lunch would be nice – dinner if we factor in the families whose guardians do not have cushy Mon-Fri daytime jobs… hmm what if we had the structure of school as a child care option for parents that are not in the traditional work schedule…

Oops – that’s a bit too far – Finnish “bells”, GeniusHour and Foods are good start!