Two Teachers, One Salad Bar, and A Better Schedule

It's 11:25am. I'm standing at the window overlooking the back of our campus. Class started at 11:15. Where are my kids?

The trek from the science building to our Design Center is about as far as you can go between buildings on campus, and from this window I can see the whole journey. But still, no kids. It's rare for students to be this late to my class.

Then the science door swings open. Sixth graders stream out, coats in their arms, Chromebook cases flopping as they break into a run. Someone has told them they're late.

I sip my coffee. My phone rings.

"I'm sorry they're late," It’s Leah, our Science teacher. "We were doing an experiment, and they were so into it that we lost track of time. I told them to run."

In that moment, I'm reminded of something a former colleague, Ross Peters, once told me: when you are working on school design, the most important thing is to keep students at the center.

The first time I heard that, I remember thinking, "Doesn't everyone already know this?" Isn't that the whole point of school?

It turns out, it's not that simple.

After years of working on curriculum from the outside, I took a full-time role inside a school. As I come to the end of my third year, I understand Ross’ wisdom differently. Yes, schools exist for students. But within a functioning system — schedules, transitions, coverage, logistics — it is surprisingly easy for the systems designed to support students to quietly start running the show.

The kids finally arrive, still buzzing from science.

"I'm sorry we're late, Mr. Hamilton," says Molly. "We were doing something so cool!"

The science teacher lost track of time. The kids were deeply engaged. So why, I wonder, did they stop? Why are they here with me at all?

The answer is simple: the schedule said so.

Forty-minute classes. When the bell rings, you go. No matter what.

Whose rule is that, really? More importantly, who is that rule for? Are students at the center of our schedule — or is the schedule at the center, and students move through it?

At lunch, I run into Leah at the salad bar.

"I'm sorry again," she says.

"Please stop apologizing," I tell her. "The next time our sixth graders are that engaged, keep them!"

"Are you sure? They were really into it."

"Of course. I think that's our job."

We are two teachers separated by a bin of romaine lettuce, making a quiet agreement: learning matters more than the clock.

So how do we keep students at the center when the schedule sometimes feels constraining?

In design class, when I want to push our thinking, I start with an intentionally ridiculous idea — something just beyond reasonable. The goal isn't to build it. It's to stretch the space of what feels possible.

Here's a just-beyond-reasonable example:

What if every classroom had a blue light mounted to the wall — with a big button underneath it that read "Kids Learning." Whenever a class is locked in, the teacher can press it. A light would spin in whatever classroom is next on the schedule, signaling: they're going to be late, or they may not come at all.

You couldn't abuse it. You could get three presses a year. But when you press it, you do it without guilt, because you're doing it for students.

No one is installing blue lights in their classrooms. I know. But I do wonder what it would take to design a schedule with that kind of flexibility.

While a forty-minute period sometimes feels constraining, another thing I talk about with my students is how constraints can be a feature, not a bug. Schedule redesign is a worthwhile but often lengthy process involving many stakeholders and lasting a whole school year.

There are lower-stakes experiments you can explore now. Instead of a wholesale redesign, try a — to steal another design term — rapid prototype.

For our sixth graders, we now intentionally organize the schedule so that science and tech classes are back-to-back three days a week. The science teacher and I have started looking for areas where our curriculum naturally overlaps. When those moments happen, we combine the blocks. That way, if students are deep in something, they have the full eighty minutes instead of forty.

No schedule overhaul. No kids sprinting across campus.

When students studied endangered animals, I was starting a unit on podcast production. When we joined forces, Leah brought research strategy and lessons about the real drivers of extinction. I brought how to shape, record, and edit a story (complete with animal sound effects). Together, we had the time to help students figure out both what mattered and how to say it well.

When they studied bridge design, we joined forces again. Leah introduced structural principles such as how triangles offer strength, and a materials budget that forced students to consider their designs and make real tradeoffs. I brought the construction side: how to think about load distribution, where joints fail, and how to get the most strength out of every popsicle stick connection. The extended time changed what was possible.

What made this more student-centered:

• Combined blocks — eighty minutes instead of forty
• Complementary expertise — two teacher lenses on the same work and more one-on-one time with each student
• Absorbed passing time — one less transition, more time to think and stay focused

Logical pairings are likely already in your schedule. What's possible when Tech backs up against Art? When Music follows Spanish? When Phys Ed follows Science? Sometimes just naming the pairing is enough to begin generating ideas.

Testing small moves like these — strategic pairings, combined blocks, teachers joining forces — is a low-stakes way to prototype a schedule redesign and keep students even more at the center of the learning.

It just took me standing at my window, watching my sixth graders sprint across campus, to understand what Ross meant.

Dave Hamilton is the Director of Design Technology at Tenacre School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Previously, Dave served as Program Director at EXPLO Elevate and as Creative Director for EXPLO.