On paper, everything in my school’s schedule made sense.
Students who needed reading intervention received reading intervention. English learners received language support. Students received speech, occupational therapy, and other services based on identified needs. Every service had a purpose, and every decision was being made by educators trying to help children succeed.
But I kept coming back to one question: What was all of this support asking a student to miss during class?
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That question became the starting point for redesigning our master schedule.
I began by forming a new master schedule committee that included representatives from each grade level, as well as music and physical education instructors, reading and math support, and English-as-a-new-language and special education teachers. Together, we mapped student schedules, tracking service overlaps and looking closely at when students were leaving classrooms throughout the day. Some of the students receiving the most support were also experiencing the most fragmented school day.
A student might leave during the beginning of a literacy lesson and return during independent practice. Another might miss part of math several times each week for an intervention designed to help close an academic gap.
Speech made sense. Reading intervention made sense. English-language support made sense. The problem was that we had been looking at each service separately. We had not spent enough time looking at what happened when all those decisions landed on the same child.
We offered students plenty of support, but what we lacked was coherence.
Once we saw that, our scheduling conversations began to change. We became more intentional about protecting literacy and math blocks, increased push-in support when a student’s needs could be addressed effectively in the classroom. We looked for ways to make intervention supplement classroom instruction instead of replacing it.
For example, many of our English learners had greater access to Tier 1 instruction when language support was integrated into the classroom rather than delivered through isolated pullout lessons. Math interventions could push into the small-group portion of a lesson to support students two to three times a week without removing students from the classroom.
Schools are naturally organized around individual systems. Intervention teams focus on intervention. Related-service providers focus on mandated services. Classroom teachers focus on core instruction. Administrators worry about staffing, contracts, schedules, lunches, coverage, and compliance. In my school, redesigning the schedule has meant looking across those individual systems instead of evaluating them one at a time. We soon began hearing new questions from staff.
“Will this pull them out of math?”
“Can we do this in the classroom instead?”
“Are they missing the mini-lesson?”
We stopped beginning every conversation with where an adult was available and started with the student.
When students stay in the classroom to receive support, they do more than simply log additional minutes of instruction. They hear the launch of the lesson and see the teacher model the thinking before being asked to do the work themselves. Support also becomes easier to connect to what was already happening in the room.
More than a year after we began this work, we started to see encouraging results in standardized-test scores and student-belonging survey data. That progress contributed to our school being recognized as a model school and invited to present this past summer at the Model Schools Conference, a national gathering where educators share promising practices and school improvement efforts.
With our conference room set up to mock a regular classroom, my team and I turned more than 60 school and district leaders into 2nd graders for an hour. Before the “lesson” began, we briefly explained the problem we had been trying to solve: Students could receive every support needed and still experience a fragmented day.
Then, we simulated the reality many of our teachers and students faced prior to our scheduling work. The lesson began normally. A teacher introduced a concept, and instruction got underway.
After that, participants began getting called out of the room. By the end of the simulation, people who had supposedly been in the same class had experienced very different lessons. Some missed the teacher’s explanation. Others returned for independent work without hearing the instruction that came before it. Several had spent a noticeable part of the period simply moving from one place to another.
Each interruption represented something a student could legitimately need. Viewed one at a time, every decision could be defended. Put them together, and the experience looked very different.
The conversation during our conference session changed quickly after the simulation. Participants stopped talking primarily about staffing, minutes, and service delivery and started talking about what it felt like to be the student.
That mindset now shapes how I approach scheduling.
Not every pullout is wrong, and not every service belongs in the classroom. Some students need targeted instruction elsewhere. The point is to see the trade-offs from the student’s perspective before accepting them.
Everyone can own a piece of the schedule. But unlike at the secondary level, where counselors often help map out a student’s full schedule for graduation requirements, elementary schools do not typically have one person looking across the entire day. School leaders must take responsibility for the coherence of the student experience.
I still have to balance staffing, service minutes, contractual requirements, intervention needs, lunch periods, and all the other constraints that make elementary scheduling difficult. But before I finalize the schedule, I now pick a sample and trace several students’ days on paper from arrival to dismissal to see where services overlap and whether they are being pulled away from core instruction. When that review reveals avoidable conflicts or too much fragmentation, we revise the adult schedule before it becomes the student’s reality.
Pick a student who receives multiple services and follow that student’s schedule from arrival to dismissal. Count the transitions. Look at what instruction is missed. Notice when the student enters a lesson late or leaves before it ends. Look at what the student receives but also at what receiving it requires the student to give up.
