Dearborn Public School Develops A New “Beneficial” Remote Learning Schedule for High School

Starting on Jan. 27, 2021 all three high schools in the district will be following a new remote schedule for the start of the second semester. This new schedule has a time frame where school will typically run just as it used to, but the changes is that the first hour will now start 8:00 a.m. and the sixth hour will end at 1:00 p.m every day with breaks in between. There will no longer be A/B days and no asynchronous work. 

The district’s administration said the new schedule is intended to benefit students by providing daily Zoom calls and discontinuing asynchronous work time in order to alleviate some stress from students.

Shannon Peterson, Dearborn Public Schools Executive Director, said the new schedule was developed with the students’ best interests in mind. “The intention was to provide more live instruction for our students. Many students struggle with asynchronous learning and need the daily support,” Peterson said. 

The middle schools piloted the new format in November.  “Middle School students have had greater success since this change was implemented in November. This will also allow for a smooth transition to a hybrid schedule as the times will be very similar,” Peterson said.

Emily Wall-Winkel, tenth grade language arts teacher at Dearborn High School, said there are both positives and negatives with any type of transition. “It will certainly be a big adjustment. Seeing all our classes every day will make things a bit more structured and ‘normal’, which may help in some ways. I’m not looking forward to having to be fully ready to tackle the day by 8 a.m, and I’m sure a lot of students will struggle to shift their sleep schedules,” Wall-Winkel said. 

DHS Assistant Principal Kelly Dear said the shift at the start of the second semester should help correct some of the setbacks students faced during the first semester with remote learning.  “The new schedule will hopefully provide students with the structure many have stated they need. It will provide them daily contact with their teachers in a format which will allow for interactions similar to what they knew in the past, along with the opportunity for additional assistance during virtual labs at the end of each day,” Dear said.