The average amount of days in school in the U.S is 180. Minnesota requires 165, and SPA is in session for 167 days. After a six-day weekend, students feel the effects of extended breaks and limited time in school. Having the right amount of time in school is essential for delivering a strong education, and time of instruction can have a major impact on the experiences of students and teachers alike.

Junior Nijah Johnson finds that SPA takes off a lot of holidays: “[My old school] had time off for regular holidays like Christmas, but every holiday possible, SPA finds it and gives us time off for it,” she said.

Asha Peckosh views these extra days differently. The sophomore enjoys the additional time she is able to spend taking trips and relaxing with her family.

Patrick Wall, a junior, notices these struggles between time off and instruction time. “Teachers trying to schedule around holidays… It can cramp and stretch stuff out… [and] can mess with the schedule,” he said.

One study by Victor Lavy researched achievement gaps based on instruction time on an international scale. The study found that instructional time has a significant positive effect on test scores with a larger impact on girls, immigrants, and people of low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Physics teacher Scot Hovan has taught in schools throughout the state and country with a variety of day-in-school configurations.

“One of the things that I’ve come across is I don’t really worry about the number of days that we’re in session as much as the number of minutes that I have with the students,” Hovan said.

At his previous school in Minnesota, Mahtomedi, he taught 55-minute blocks every day rather than 75 minutes every other day to run his Physics classes. In his nine years there, Hovan was able to cover more content during the school year because of how much instruction time he was given.

In Minnesota, public school students must have 1,020 hours of instruction time from grades 6-12, which is on the higher end of the international scale. Still Minnesota students fail to have half of students at grade level in reading and math.

When it comes to instructional hours, SPA is below the state average, with 825 hours spent in class, although Lavy notes that quality of instruction and administration also play a factor in the efficacy of time spent.

Hovan attributes this difference in-class time to a difference in values and a focus on building a school community. He doesn’t find one necessarily better than the other. Looking back at the 55-minute schedule, Hovan said, “In terms of how much content I was able to explore with students, yes, but [not] in terms of the school community.”

When days are taken off for holidays or community events, Hovan has accounted for this when scheduling classes and tests, leading to periods of time where students are assessed in more subjects: “Tests often kind of get clumped together, and students have tests or assessments in like this little window in multiple classes around the same time,” he said.

Johnson also feels the scheduling impacts and struggles to take tests directly after long breaks. With a test this week, Johnson said, “I [didn’t] know if I was going to be as motivated to study.”

For Hovan, that means being more intentional about what he fits into his limited instruction time to make the greatest impact on his students.

While she enjoys the breaks and finds them to be a good rest, Johnson feels the negative impacts of long weekends and extra breaks: “It kinda negatively affects [my learning] sometimes because we learn so much and then we take multiple days off without any of it. Then you come back and don’t remember… it feels like I’m behind,” she said.

Peckosh finds that days off give students much-needed rest throughout the school year: “I feel like having days off gives us a chance to reset, and then there’s more days where I’m actually feeling like I want to be here,” Peckosh said. “I don’t think that having less school messes up my schedule for testing or learning.”

Wall understands both sides of the argument.

“Trying to fit in all the holidays while also maintaining the importance of a set schedule with full weeks… there’s an important balance to be set there,” he said. “We do celebrate a lot of holidays, which I get, but it also takes more school days away.”

While all students experience the breaks differently, it is true that SPA has significantly less instructional time than most high schools. Some like it and some don’t, but frequent long weekends are a fact of life here.