The Domino Effect of Schedules

What I Learned In School Today: A scheduling change can have a major domino effect.

Yesterday evening my building principal and I learned that we would be able to add an additional first grade section for the upcoming school year starting in a few days. We were certainly excited about this and its positive impact on our kids, but we knew today was going to be a treadmill day where we just kept going and going.

Securing a teacher for the first grade class was massively important. We were fortunate enough to bring in a teacher who has worked in our school before and does a fantastic job. The familiarity should help some of the uneasiness felt by students and parents being moved into her class. Building

Of all the far ranging impact that the new first grade class had on our school, the impact on schedules was perhaps the most far reaching. Fitting a new section into the schedules of our special area teachers as well as assigning supports to that class was no small task. Thus began the domino effect. Since there were limited openings in the special area teachers’ schedules, we needed to make some shifts in their schedules and move things around a bit. Unfortunately, every individual shift knocked over the next domino, causing more changes. All in all, the addition of a single section resulted in schedule changes for about 20 teachers in our school.

What’s the best way to manage all of these shifts? Regardless of the scheduling methods used in your school, sticking to an organizational strategy and having an understanding and flexible staff makes life a lot easier.