By Adam Fleischman ’25
At the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, Choate adjusted its daily schedule to have shorter class lengths, longer lunch periods, and a built-in advisory block. While these changes might have seemed out of the blue (and gold), to most students, our daily schedule has undergone tens of iterations, some of which will be explored in this article.
If you thought your weeks were busy, imagine if you had school on Saturdays too! Like many other boarding schools, Choate had many Academic Saturdays throughout the year, which existed up until 2008. These days were half-days like our current Wednesdays, and unlike Saturday classes during Parents Weekend, Academic Saturdays were extra days of class on top of a whole week of classes. With around 15 per academic year, Choate kept their students busy.
As crazy as having Saturday classes may seem, this practice wasn’t too unconventional or demanding. Science teacher Ms. Fran O’Donoghue, who has been at Choate for since 1984, said, “There were almost zero outside-of-Choate commitments and activities that students had or participated in, so there were practically no conflicts.”
Today, many students compete in club sports or do community service beyond the Choate campus and daily class schedule, which would have made these Academic Saturdays quite strenuous. Even so, this tradition still exists in many New England private schools. Three of Choate’s sister schools — the Hotchkiss School, the Lawrenceville School, and St. Paul’s School — continue to have regular Saturday classes.
Nevertheless, there was still backlash to these Academic Saturdays from Choate students. They argued that it restricted their free time and increased stress and workload. In 1998, Choate student Lauren Hoss ’00 argued that “Teachers should not be allowed to give tests or collect papers on academic Saturdays” and suggested that the School enact policies to restrict the amount of work that could be assigned for the sixth day of the school week. From 1997 to 1999, Choate employed the rotating “Blue” and “Gold” schedules. Every week was either a “Blue” or a “Gold” week, and each day contained seven 40-minute periods and one 55-minute period, except for Wednesdays which contained four 55-minute blocks.
Similarly to Wednesdays, Saturday classes ran from 8 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. with four 55-minute classes and one 30-minute meeting period. Throughout each week, there were four 30-minute meeting periods as well. With very short blocks, teachers wanted longer class periods, leading the School to adopt a standard one-week schedule containing seven 50-minute class periods per class day in the following years.
Current Choate students are familiar with the hustle and bustle of the dining hall and the struggle to find a seat during lunch, yet former Choate students would not have dealt with this daily dilemma. From 2005 to 2017, students had Community Lunch twice per week where they were required to sit at assigned tables to get to know classmates and teachers better.
The seating requirements did not sit well with students, who wanted to sit with friends, resulting in a protest early on in its existence. The March on Arch, which took place in [YEAR], was a demonstration of 125 students protesting the Community Lunches. Although the Administration was adamant on not making any modifications, Community Lunch was reduced to only once per week.
Recently, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, students took to Zoom for their classes. In the 2020-2021 academic year, the class day was divided into two parts: five class periods in the morning from 8:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. and another two periods in the evening, blocks H and I, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:40 p.m. These changes were made to accommodate the time zone difference due to the vast number of international students who returned home during the pandemic. Interestingly, the colors for each block shifted to accommodate the new schedule; while we may associate some blocks with specific colors, such as C block with red or D block with yellow, with the addition of blocks H and I, these blocks shifted colors to pink and peach, respectively.
Choate’s schedule has been changing since its inception, and over the past century, our school day has drastically changed. It’s fascinating to observe how our schedule has changed over the years to suit the School’s needs and interests, as well as the wants of students and the Choate community.
