A disappointing semester teaching

Change is not an easy thing. It can be so difficult, in fact, that I sometimes feel like I have to make a conscious effort to not discard something just because it's different. I really try and work with change and remain positive instead of moaning and groaning.

When our school decided to go to an alternating block schedule for this school year, I was very skeptical, but I thought it would give me an opportunity to become a better teacher. I worked with an "expert" on block scheduling and tried to redo my teaching techniques a bit in order to become more effective.

Unfortunately, I can now say definitively that I hate the alternating block. As I began to make the review for my students final exams, it became clear how poorly things have gone for me this year. My trig/precal class has covered two and a half chapters in a semester. Now if you consider the fact that in a normal year, we cover around 11 chapters, it becomes rather obvious that we're getting half the work done we used to. All of that makes sense if you consider that we meet every other day.

Why is it that experts in education continue to come back to this idea of teaching on the block. It has never worked well for most schools, but it continues to come back time and time again.