Fostering Equity during WIN using MyFlexLearning

Newton North High School redesigned its master schedule around a simple question: what did the school actually value? A 2,130-student high school in the Boston metro area with 445 staff, Newton North grounded that redesign in academic excellence, equity, and social-emotional learning, then built WIN Block to carry those values through the school day.

Before WIN, Newton North had an X Block for extra help twice a week, tacked onto the end of an already long school day. Structurally, it looked like flex time. Culturally, students treated it as optional, and the students most likely to skip it were often the ones who needed it most. Students in the METCO program who took a bus back to Boston at the end of the day, along with students working after-school jobs, faced a real trade-off: stay for support and get home late, or skip it and go home on time. A later start time meant Newton North needed to shorten its day, and the school used that moment to move its flexible time to the middle of the day instead, making it accessible to every student regardless of their schedule outside of class.

The shift required negotiating with the teachers’ association, since WIN would draw on what had been classroom instructional time. Newton North’s leadership was direct on this point from day one.

Within a five-day rotating cycle, Newton North built three coordinated blocks: Advisory (Monday mornings, 20 minutes) for homeroom, planning, and connecting with a consistent adult across all four years; WIN Block (three times a cycle, 50 minutes) for extra help, enrichment, and teacher collaboration; and Tiger Time (weekly, 50 minutes), an intentionally student-driven period for clubs and activities.

Selecting a tool to run it came down to three criteria: flexibility, SIS integration, and ease of use.

WIN offerings go well beyond academic support. Teachers run enrichment sessions built around their own interests alongside standard extra-help and homework time. Creative arts are especially popular: students can book individual sessions with music teachers, join small groups for art, or use the art room during WIN even if they’re not enrolled in a studio class. Culture days, where student groups showcase different traditions, have also become a fixture of the WIN calendar. The block has even opened the door to civic engagement that wouldn’t otherwise fit into a class period — during a recent mayoral election, the school hosted the incumbent mayor for a WIN session where students could ask questions directly.

The results speak for themselves. In the 2021–2022 school year alone, Newton North staff created 2,516 distinct WIN offerings, and students logged 518,205 schedule changes, the great majority self-directed. The school’s team sees that volume as a sign of real student ownership: a student initially placed into a WIN session by an administrator will often use that first exposure to seek out something closer to what they actually wanted going forward.