The Brown and White

The 2019-2020 school year brought about many changes at CHS for students and staff alike. Following the approval of block scheduling in March, Catasauqua administrators worked to create a schedule that would bring change to the environment in which the students learned in. Teachers were given the task of designing lessons for 79-minute semester courses as opposed to the traditional 42-minute year-long classes.

Over a dozen new electives were offered, ranging from Personal Fitness to Current Events for Global Citizens. The music department added two new electives to their course offerings, Digital Music and History of Rock and Roll. Team Sports, Personal Fitness and Recreational Lifetime Activities were also added on the fitness side. Other new electives include Studio Sculpture and Ceramics, Environmental Science, and personal finance. With the addition of these courses, students had a wider selection of classes when scheduling. CHS Principal Adam Schnug has already mentioned that more changes are to come in regards to additional courses.

“Moving forward to 2020-2021, there will be some changes to the schedule,” said Schnug. “We are already planning more electives for next year.”

In addition to the new courses, existing courses needed to be revised. English, Algebra I and Earth Science were some of the courses that were updated in the process of switching from the previous schedule to block scheduling.

Implementing new schedules and courses comes with various challenges. Schnug believed that one of the biggest challenges seemed to be scheduling all the students’ classes.

“If I had one do-over from last year to this year, I would have had our students register for back-up courses,” said Schnug. “Last school year we did not know which electives were going to be popular and which ones were not. To get an accurate idea of numbers for courses, we only had students register the eight courses that the student wanted.”

 Sophomore Bronwyn Pacchioli is in favor of the new schedule and likes only having four classes in a day, which has reduced her stress tremendously

 “Honestly, I love block scheduling.” said Pacchioli. “I think it is way more efficient and effective than last year’s schedule.”

Senior Jordan Blose sees both the advantages and disadvantages of block scheduling. She has math and English this semester and is concerned this could be a problem when entering college next year, as she will have gone a few months without these classes. However, she does like the pace of the day.

“The day goes by so fast for me,” said Blose. “Next semester I have an afternoon waiver which I get to leave school around 1:10 p.m. This is something to look forward to everyday.”

Schnug, creator and implementer of the new schedule, believes block scheduling has had a tremendously positive impact on the environment of our school.

“We were able to offer 18 new courses as a result of moving to this schedule format,” said Schnug. “Advanced Placement enrollment has gone from 44 students last year to 72 this year, and honors course enrollments have gone from 322 students to 376. Block scheduling has created the opportunity for more students to take higher-level courses.”

Schnug also credits block scheduling for a significant drop in discipline incidents from this time last school year.

The end of the first semester will be January 21, and students will begin their courses for the second semester at that time.