The Benefits Of School Days

Americans always seem to be in a rush, getting to work on time, taking their children to school, making it to doctors appointments or simply just running errands on a daily basis, teenagers are always on a rush as well, managing to get to school before the bell rings and trying to get to class on time. The bell rings, barely audible due to all the loud talking, students are not in their seats yet, meandering around the classroom as if they were still out at their lunch break, just as the teacher is going to start the lesson, the class is interrupted by an office aide. This takes more time away from the students learning, “A number of educational research studies have shown that more than half of a typical school day is consumed by non-instructional

Extending the school day will allow teachers to take time in explaining the lesson, given that sometimes the lessons are arduous. With so many constant distractions, class is often times rushed due to the short class period. In Marita’s Bargain, Malcolm Gladwell indicates that having longer class periods is extremely important because it gives the teacher time to explain important, difficult information that is not easy for students to process. Not only are the students being rushed into copying everything they are expected to understand it, but how are they supposed to understand it if the class is so limited? Making the school day longer allows teachers to teach a slower pace so students can grasp everything (276). Not all students understand something right away, some need extra time. The lesson is going by so quickly that the student is just focused on copying the notes rather than listening to the explanation and most of the time the explanation is far more helpful than just copying everything down. Students just copy and when it comes to do the homework they have no clue what their notes say because they were so focused on just copying everything rather than listening. Slowing down the lesson just a bit can really help students grasp and understand the material. If the school day was extended, the teacher would have more time to explain everything, even the little things like why is the domain all real numbers except

In the article, The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, Carol S. Dweck explains that most students aren’t being challenged enough, students are given simple tasks and when faced with more challenging tasks they tend to give up. Teachers find it easier to just give students easy problems for the sake of time, but with longer class periods this would no longer be an issue (2015). If the school day was extended teachers could assign more challenging problems and have students work on them individually after the lesson and then have them share their findings out loud, but sadly their learning is limited to 45 minutes daily. Assigning challenging problems will potentially help increase the student 's thinking and reasoning skills as well as expanding their knowledge. After taking notes students could benefit from a challenging problem, this would enable them to see if they’ve understood the material well and allow them to ask for help and for further explanation if necessary. The reason why we need longer school days is so teachers can provide the students with these difficult problems that will help the students