There were 7 periods. 5th was always the same. Which wing of the building your 5th period class was in determined which of the three lunches you ate. Second lunch split 5th period in half, but class time in 5th period was actually 15 minutes longer or so, even with the lunch break.
The first four periods of the day 1234 would rotate. I think this was done so that people who were late to school often wouldn’t just keep missing the same class over and over again. IIRC it was weekly. 1234, 2341, 3412, etc. Could be wrong about the exact rotation.
The last two periods would also flip around. I forget when they flipped, but they did. This was so people who left early didn’t keep missing the same class over and over again.
My highschool schedule was similar to Scott’s with one exception, the last 2 periods after 5th/lunch did not rotate at all and were the same every day.
There were busses right after lunch for those who could leave early and didnt have a 6th or 7th period and there were also busses after 6th. That was at my state highschool.
When I went to a magnet highschool for junior and senior. The smaller student body and the fact that the school itself was only 3-4 years old (I attended it for it’s 3rd and 4th years of existence) the schedule looked much more like something one dude would come up with and wasn’t something tried and true.
I believe we had static schedules every day. And the only early release busses were those that left the school 15 minutes early to transport you to another school so you could play on their sports team (which I always took because I was still treasurer of my old hichschool’s Asian Culture Club and a prominent member of the theater crew)
My state school was HUGE. I just saw it again on the list of top 100 state high schools in the state of CT… 98. like 4-5 thousand kids. Of course they couldn’t keep track of them. Some just didn’t register for periods 6 or 7. And requirements were a bit thinner for the upperclassmen, so they could just do their math, science, english, history or whatever and go home.
Most students though had enough classes to make it to the end of the day.
My high school at the time was about 300 students, so the schedule was 6 classes, one hour each, with a common lunch period between periods 4 and 5 and a short break between 2 and 3. We also had a rotation so that each day was different, the first period of one day would be last period the next day (1,2,3,4,5,6 then 2,3,4,5,6,1). If you wanted to do any electives, it had to be zero period before school started. At some point they also added a new thing where Wednesdays were late start to let kids sleep in one day a week, and classes were shortened by 10 minutes each. That was the best.
For us it was 7 periods of… I wanna say 50 minutes? Except the lunch period was like 20 minutes longer or something, and that’s when you had lunch, and all the periods rotated, so each day a different class got interrupted by lunch.
Except then they fucked it up by doing shit like "Actually, period 1 is always in block 1, except on Day 2, when it’s period 2 and sometimes blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh
It was an option for the regular kids, but not for the high performing kids. i.e., basically anyone taking AP or “college prep” classes would never have a study hall.
We also never had a “home room.” It was something I’d heard of in sitcoms, but never seen in person.
Home room is basically just to take attendance at the beginning of the day. Boston Latin had no senior privileges, and no ability to leave early. It also did not have driver’s education, or the mythic “shop class” or “home ec.” We were too busy learning Latin instead. I wish I had learned to cook instead.
Seniors couldn’t leave early, but 18 year olds could legally sign themselves out of school “sick” just like their parents would (at least in Michigan).
So as soon as I turned 18, I would go to the AP’s office and sign myself out (or call in “sick”) whever I wanted to bail on school. =P
Each class just took attendance and tracked it separately. First period was no different, except that if somone didn’t show up to it the school would call their house if there wasn’t a reason on file by the end of the period.
I think the only real senior privilege at FHS was Senior Skip Day and you got out a bit early on the last day of school to ride in a circle around the common and scream like idiots.
Everyone had a homeroom, but you went to it extremely rarely. Obviously you would go there at the start of the first day of school. Otherwise it would only be for situations where there was an administrative task that everyone in school had to deal with.
The communication of when there was a homeroom was very poor. As a result, upperclassmen would often yell “homeroom!” in the hallways between classes to trick freshman into going to homeroom instead of the class they were supposed to go to.
Home room at my school was basically the same as @HitmanHart’s. It was for morning attendance and dealing with school paperwork like report cards and such. They were organized by alphabetical order of last name and year of graduation and had no other significance. For example, all the A-names and a few B-names from my graduating year were in my homeroom.
The only senior privilege we had was “senior study,” which allowed us to go outside near the cafeteria instead of being cooped up indoors all day long. We were also allowed to be fairly social (it was held in the school auditorium) instead of only being able to work or read quietly. There was also Senior Skip Day, but it was an unofficial privilege not endorsed by the faculty.
All “study halls” in my school were just cases where you had a free period on your schedule that wasn’t occupied by another class. For high-performing kids, it usually came as a result of odd scheduling quirks involving classes that didn’t meet every day, such as phys ed or lab sessions for science classes. I think my senior year did have an every day one, but it was because my schedule was already full with honors and AP classes, none of which fit in that time slot, and I didn’t find any interesting elective classes to fill that slot either. I think I only had any sort of study hall for two of my high school years, and one of them was the aforementioned senior study.
My high school did have shop and home ec classes, but generally those were elective classes and I didn’t really know anyone who took them except for maybe a couple of kids my senior year who wanted to pad out their schedules.
Homeroom was only for administrative tasks. You went there at the beginning of the year. Again to collect your report card and I think they may have given you a locker.
I genuinely forgot what mine was most of the time and had to go to the office to collect my report card.