The bell rings and you shuffle out of your first-period class, tired and ready to get another school day over with. You make your way to your FIT, sit on your phone, and waste time. After the short 26 minutes, you make your way to your second-period class.
Flexible Instruction Time (FIT) shouldn’t be required, and students who need the extra time to work should sign up for Study Hall as one of their electives. Study hall would give them 90 minutes twice a week to get their extra work done, as well as learn useful time management skills and ways to take notes and stay on top of their work. FIT is often a waste of time that would be better served doing things students enjoy or are motivated to do.
Most of the time, when I’m in FIT I pass the time by scrolling on my phone or playing games on my chromebook. Sometimes I try to get homework done, but often the bell rings before I can finish my homework well. It’s easier to just focus on it sometime after school than stop and start it over and over again when I have spare five minutes.
If managed properly, FIT can be a vital resource for many students. It can help people who are a part of extracurriculars or have commitments outside of school have a time built into the school day for them to get their work done. FIT helps lighten the load for many students, and that’s why I think that a study hall class period would benefit many students.
When I missed a day of school or all of my teachers loaded me with homework on the same day, FIT can be useful and help keep my grades under control. The issue is that most students don’t take advantage of the time. I’ve seen my classmates use FIT for anything from catching up on their favorite show to doing their makeup with friends.
FIT has more issues than just poor time management, however. With the newly enforced hallway rules, students aren’t supposed to leave their classes and can’t even use the bathroom during FIT. But if you happen to leave your class, you’ll see students roaming the halls, sitting at tables, and talking to their friends.
With the block schedule this year, each class period is an hour and a half long. That’s plenty of time for students to learn the content and at least get most of their schoolwork done. Teacher’s should build time into their classes to review the content and finish the assigned work so that students can focus on jobs, clubs, and any extracurriculars they’re a part of.
FIT is a class period that theoretically would be helpful to many students, but is often mis-managed. It would be more beneficial to students to remove the required FIT period and encourage a study hall elective.
