Flex periods can be a powerful tool for student intervention, social emotional learning and enrichment. However, without tools to build student accountability and engagement the logistics of your flex period can quickly become an unmanaged mess.
Teacher Accountability and Engagement
Accountability and engagement begin with administrators ensuring that all teachers are on board with the purpose and goals of the flex period. One best practice is to include members of the teaching staff in any committees formed to plan the implementation of a flex period. Another is to recruit teacher leaders to play a role in the administration of your flex period and any software you use to manage it. Finally, administrators should work to create an environment that is conducive to effective flex period use, such as by providing teachers with training and support.
Administrators will want to have oversight into teacher offerings and how teachers are spending that time.
The following features help facilitate teacher management:
1. Filters to quickly find unscheduled teachers
2. A mobile app that supports push notifications, including notifications to staff when students are added to a roster
3. Administrator management of enrollment maximums and minimums, ensuring all students have space in a class during your flex period.
Student Accountability and Engagement
Schools who run successful flex periods set and distribute clear expectations for students, but also promote the exciting opportunities a flex period will bring. They ensure that students are aware of their responsibilities when signing up for a flex period and also of the ways they will be held accountable.
Your flex scheduler should not only be able to facilitate student scheduling, but also give teachers and administrators tools to ensure the scheduling is happening according to the guidelines set by the school.
The following features help student scheduling go as expected:
1. Announcements or “posts” to promote new and exciting classes
2. “Explore classes” allows students to view all classes your school offers across all days.
3. Filters to find unscheduled students and quickly schedule them.
4. Attendance tracking and reporting, including the ability to view students who are skipping flex period
5. Ability to turn on/off student self-scheduling for subsets of students
6. Ability to import attendance data back into your Student Information System to ensure all attendance data is stored in one location
7. A mobile app that supports push notifications, including notifications to students of schedule changes.
Schools across the country are realizing the benefits of having a flex period. A key to a successful flex period is having tools to manage teachers and students to ensure the flex period is being used as intended.
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Why is it important to integrate your SIS and your flex scheduler?