Teaching Jobs Abroad

At every school I taught at, the duration of the class, the break time between the class and the time of day of the class was unique to the school. It was always interesting to see these small differences play out on student learning and engagement.

In one school the classes were simple 45 minute blocks with 15¹ minute breaks between each set of students. This was great from a teacher schedule perspective -- short classes / lenient breaks, but from an activity lens it was a literal race to the bell -- there was very little time to set up larger tasks and it required minute to minute time management. In terms of edification, it hurt the ability of students to really get into a topic in the presence of the teacher, or in the presence of their peers with a teacher keeping a watchful eye (i.e., where everyone should in theory be focused on the task).

On the flipside, the longest I class length I had was two 50 minute blocks with a 10² minute break. This was great for student learning on most activities, but at times I could see students flagging, in general the longer the class the more downward pressure on the student. If a student had a poor sleep or didn't eat, or didn't do the reading it really starts to show in the longer class times in most teaching formats. The longer the class duration, the more likely the student is called on by the teacher or forced to speak in a group and illustrate to everyone the knowledge of the topic (or lack thereof).

An article by Cooke³ calls into question basically everything I said above, showing a lack of evidence either way. (needs more detail).

Rough draft -> could use more detail, but publishing now - may move time of day discussion to another blog