With North and South Brunswick High Schools introducing the new Flex Block, West is the last traditional school in the county without one.
Brunswick County Schools held stakeholder meetings in late November, developing a strategic plan for the next five years with the help of a third party company. Some topics of discussion at the November 29th high school student meeting included focusing on CTE classes, student pride, dual enrollment classes, and more. Despite the multitude of great ideas and areas of concern being floated, the dominant discussion point was the Flex Block, a concept allowing students to have time for tutoring, clubs, homework, and just recuperation during the school day.
Flex block allows students time to focus on their clubs and other activities when their grades are up. This is a good opportunity to remove barriers for student engagement, allowing students who can’t stay after school for extracurricular activities a chance to still be active in their school community. Principal Scott Dalton was familiar with the concept, having followed a similar model at a prior school.
“It gives students extra support to improve their grades and extra things they are struggling with,” said Dalton. “It also gives students a little bit of fun during the school day because some might not have rides home.”
With flex block, students have some free time to improve their grades and teachers can improve their connection with students.
“You can choose any class or club you want,” said North Brunswick freshman Madalyn Webb. “The teachers set up clubs in their classrooms, and you pick a club you’re interested in, for example board games or cellphone happiness.”
A lot of students get overwhelmed because they have to go from class to class without getting a break. A schedule change like the one proposed would help kids look forward to school and not always dread their school experience.
“I feel like it could help me because it would give us an extra 30 minutes to sit down and do some extra assignments I could have done the night before for homework,” said freshman Brayden Bell. “If I need to study, I can do that too to improve my grades.”
Some people have different opinions when it comes to flex block: will it be more distracting than helpful to the student coming into high school? Will students take advantage of it as a time to improve or as a time to goof off?
“I think they will be able to manage their time better and get done with work they have been struggling with,” said senior Grace Gundrum. “After school, I dance from 3 pm – 10 pm, so I think having time during the day to just get my work done and go visit my clubs and pay my dues helps me.”
West Brunswick has been visiting advisory more often this year in hopes of creating an environment similar to a flex block. Advisory starts after first period and goes on for about 30 minutes, allowing students to have extra time to catch up on work and to just get extra information from the school.
“We would like to try to move in that direction (adding flex block) and work together as a school to make it happen,” said Dalton. “Although it’s a goal, we don’t know what it’s going to look like yet.
