During the year, Orono students participate in many sporting events, some of which can take place during the school hours if a team advances to the state tournament. When this happens, it excuses not only the students in the activities, but the entire student body to go along and support the team. This results in a need for significant adjustments to educational plans for parts of the school day that are missed.
The most recent sporting game that took place during the school day was the men’s basketball state tournament. During this event, teachers had to revise and alter their schedules to accommodate for the absence of many students.
“If I have a class of 25 students and there’s a hockey or basketball state tournament day, there’s usually about five or six at most that are still here, sometimes two or three” Math teacher Mr. Porter said.
Having that many students gone means teachers can’t cover any new material, so it becomes a review day for the students in class to catch up on their previously assigned work.
“There are usually five or fewer students. We have a work day so that students who are in class can work on what they need to work on and the students that are gone don’t miss any new stuff” English teacher Mr. Sherman said .
In science classes, oftentimes labs get rescheduled and teachers have to coordinate with the rest of the department to make sure classes stay on the same schedule.
“This can be a struggle, especially in a sport where they may play multiple days in a row in the tournament. Teachers will meet after school and figure out their plan depending on the outcome of the games, so there’s actually a lot of discussions that go into it” Science teacher Mr. Borell said.
When new work is assigned during these excused days, teachers have found that students are not very likely to complete it.
“I’ll put an online assignment up for the excused day, it will be easy, and about a third of the students will do it. It’s a pretty low number” Borell said.
This has a direct impact on their performance on the test because if the students don’t complete the assignment, they won’t know the material.
“[State games] affect my homework level a bit because when I leave school I don’t have the same amount of work time as the kids that stay,” Junior Asher Seely said.
Because these sporting games are events that the majority of students wish to attend, that majority are less likely to come to school the next day with all their homework complete if teachers don’t alter their schedules. It takes a little extra work for teachers to plan around these events, but it has shown to be more effective for students to have a flexible schedule during these days than the teachers originally planned for; allowing them to stay on top of their homework level.
