Newton Parent Jack Cheng wrote a great piece that came out in Commonwealth Magazine over the weekend in which he called on Newton (and other districts) to entirely rethink how we approach high school. He wants us to get creative in our thinking.

He offers up some ideas, with the caveat that his is just one approach, but the basics here are to entirely throw out what we know and build again. He calls on a later start time, like 9 or 930, as well as a different kind of school week: 

Math and sciences probably need demonstrations and explanations before students can do independent work, so we’ll have live Zoom classes for those on Mondays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays and Fridays, the math and science teachers will have given students packets to work on and be available for “office hours” on Zoom.

English and History would be flipped. On Mondays and Thursdays, students would have readings with reading guides to fill out, videos to critique, or poems to annotate. On Tuesdays and Fridays, those classes would meet on Zoom and discuss what they thought about the class materials.

And on Wednesdays? Well, that’s the magical part. Go read the piece and come back here to discuss it.