Bring Back Strategic Planning Days!
On a few Wednesdays last year, the usual CBEG or DAFH schedules did not pop up on our online schedules and we instead had a free day termed a “strategic planning day.” However, strategic planning only occurs once every ten years, and the days off have been replaced by normal school days until the next strategic planning year. The lack of days off serves to reduces the amount of free time a student has in a term. Even though the schedule has returned to normal, those free Wednesdays seemed to be much more effective in enabling us to go on with our personal journeys on a day-to-day basis.
As the “middle-day” of a school-week (Monday-Friday), Wednesday is a pivotal point in all of our schedules and is consequently the most beneficial of days on which to have a break fall. Since most teachers choose to have their tests or major assignments due during their class’s weekly fat block, all tests or major assignments fall on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday. A free Wednesday made the traditional “work week” feel like only two days each. Despite the fact that usual Wednesday classes end at 12:50 p.m., though, the day feels like a normal day, particularly workload-wise, for students who have to go to sports competitions or time-consuming clubs such as ESSO. The effects of a free Wednesday would be especially beneficial for these students.
In addition to the benefits that come with giving students time to relax, strategic planning Wednesdays provided an academically strategic transition time. Instead of a student having to constantly switch gears between a light-workload day or a hefty-workload day, Wednesdays without classes allowed for extra study-time between the two halves of each week. Even though the current dynamic of having Wednesdays as half-days and only running classes until 12:50 p.m. is quite advantageous, students with commitments such as sports and ESSO clubs have to invest more time in those activities, on Wednesdays. However, on free Wednesdays, plenty of hours would be freed up for students involved in athletics and time-consuming clubs. Since these Wednesdays also happened to occur once or twice a term, they did provide for a small but significant boost in free time. Strategic planning Wednesdays enabled all students to fully partake in any Wednesday activities of their choice and still have quite a lot of time to properly balance work and relaxation.
Free Wednesdays added in much more time to relax and recharge in between tests that fell on the beginning and end of the week. These strategic planning Wednesdays also provided much more time for students to study between such tests especially in the circumstances of sports and various other commitments that happen to also fall on the same days. In the ever-hectic environment of Exeter where time management is critical, strategic planning Wednesdays paved way for more quality relax-time and study-time as well as serving like an extra weekend.