Puzzle Pieces

Part of my job involves strategy, problem solving and putting together many pieces of a puzzle. Some people call this scheduling. 

It is a task I both love and hate simultaneously. 

My desk usually looks like an explosion hit it for several days while I am working on this. 

I first list all required courses for middle school and high school. I start with math classes and plug those into my template. Next usually comes Senior classes. I try to get any required courses for Seniors at the beginning of the day. This enables students to have some flexibility to co-op or take college classes in the afternoons. 

I fill in remaining classes and work on electives. Once I have approval for the master schedule, I move on to our elementary intermediate schedule. Our fourth and fifth graders rotate for their core classes and switch between four teachers. They also have a "specials" block for PE, art, music and I also plug in Spanish and computer class. 

Once that is complete I do the elementary specials master schedule for Music, Art, PE, Computer and Spanish. This is trickier than you might think. I try to give teachers some input- they would prefer about the same time every day. We want grade level teachers to have as many common plannings as possible so they can collaborate. Some teachers don't want morning specials. 

Once that is accomplished, I do a lunch schedule and recess schedule. I plug in the master schedule into individual weekly schedules for each "specials" teacher and each grade. 

The final step is to enter all this information into our student management software. This year we are migrating to a new program. Supposedly, next year my job will be easier. It can help formulate and layer schedules. After this is all in the computer, I can begin scheduling students individually for their courses.