Having a five-day work week has long been common for many, sharing commonality with schools. Creating a more flexible schedule that offers students time to explore offsite learning opportunities or remote learning from home, however, can lead to a variety of benefits, including giving students and their families the power of flexibility in the educational space.
Dr. Betsy Fowler, Head of Schools at ASU Preparatory Academy in Tempe, Arizona, and recent winner of Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award for Chief Academic Officer during the recent Denver Regional Summit, discusses her school’s Family Choice Friday, which lets her district “go big.”
“ASU Prep is a large organization in the perspective of we’re more than just full-time schools” says Fowler, adding it offers a full K-12 digital program and a globally developed curriculum. “We have amazing assets to offer our students and families, so being boxed into a traditional five-day week felt so outdated to us. There’s so much we can offer our students that are beyond our walls. So, this past year, we accepted the challenge to create a few sites piloting Family Choice Friday. Now it’s going network wide for our campuses to offer more flexible and fluid learning environments for all of our students.”
What Is Family Choice Friday?
Each Friday, ASU prep students can choose between working from home or spending a half-day program directly on the institution’s campuses engaged in special programming. On-campus sessions include academic interventions, enrichment activities, college-going experiences and coursework support, and special field trips, all designed to complement and augment the standard curriculum.
Students also have a menu of choices of other academic opportunities.
“One example is our partnership with ASU,” says Fowler. “Our kids get to go on Fridays and learn with faculty who are experts in their field. It’s not a formal learning experience. It’s like opening the doors to learning that is possible. But if we were stuck with a regular, five-day, traditional school week, it would be nearly impossible for our students to have the time they needed to be able to have this unique learning experience.”
Being able to work with professional experts can provide life-changing opportunities. It can help students learn more about subjects they find interesting, while also getting real-world experience in how those subjects are being applied to a working environment. With the leeway of having a full day to engage with this level of educational interactivity, students also find they are not restricted with time constraints holding them back.
How Important is the Idea of Choice in Education?
As a student, what you can learn may feel very limited. Oftentimes choice is not a luxury students or parents are granted when it comes to education.
“I think there’s a huge motivation that comes when we give more authority to our learners and their families,” says Fowler. “We still want to be the curators of high expectations. We make ourselves so busy as a society and having enough rest and having those well-being parts of our lives shouldn’t be underrated either. But we’re driving home the point that [students] have the most incredible opportunities to take advantage of something that would not normally be available to you if you were just going to traditional school.”
How can we make sure students see the benefits of Family Choice Friday instead of thinking about it as just another day off?
“We’ve seen that [students] rise to the occasion when we give them the choice to see it for what it is,” says Fowler. “Our hope is that even if they take some opportunities for a little more flexibility, which might mean just accounting for wellbeing, we know that each one of our students at the high school level will take advantage of these sorts of power moments to really invest in themselves with incredible opportunities.”
These types of educational opportunities provide students with invaluable moments early in their lives. Chances to build a resume, to work with professionals, and to discover their life calling. Fowler has recognized how critical this time in a student’s life is, and has found a way to maximize its impact.
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