What Upper School students call “all-class days,” students at most other schools call normal days. Due to the SPA block schedule of having four, 75 minute classes a day instead of all eight, students have become accustomed to a calmer schedule with less motion throughout the day. So when an all-class day is scheduled, student life is dramatically changed for the worse.

Usually students stay in one class for over an hour and have some sort of break in between each class. But on all-class days, they are forced to be in class for a bit over a half hour (half the time of the normal class). They have to spend time out of their day rushing to eight different classes, most of which are in a row. All-class days can also induce stress on students because teachers are able to assign homework due that day even if they had class the day before, giving the students only one night to do homework instead of the two they would have had with the block schedule.

This doesn’t only cause disruption in students’ lives, but also in their teachers’ lives. Usually SPA teachers plan for longer classes, where they are able to get more tasks done and spend time discussing and allowing their students to participate more, but on all-class days, the class lengths are cut in half, forcing the teachers to change their class plans in order to fit everything they need in the shortened time.

Overall, all-class days cause unnecessary troubles to the lives of students and faculty. The reason for all-class days is typically for some sort of school event or assembly. They can be easily avoided by sticking to the usual block schedule because whatever is causing the all class day could happen during a block day instead.