How do high school timetables in the US work?

[GreyBow]

DD is convinced from watching tv shows like Glee that the timetable in the US for public high schools consist of pretty much the same thing each day at the same time and doesn't have the same uneven mishmash that UK high school timetables have.

Is that true? I kind of want to win this argument discussion that's distracting me from WFH right now

My high schoolers do a rotating Blue/White day timetable. They have some subjects that are studied almost every day eg math, language, while other subjects they study only on Blue days or only on White days eg chorus, band, phys ed.

They study fewer subjects per week than someone doing GCSEs, more more subjects than someone doing A levels.

So... your daughter isn't quite right, but I would say the timetable isn't much like a UK timetable.

It completely depends on the school. My school had nearly the same classes every day (except some days music/art/PE/whatever might swap around). But then it rotated throughout the week. So on Monday, class A at 8:30, B at 9:15, etc. ending with class F at end of day. But then Tuesday would be B at 9:15, etc. but A would end the day. Some days we had chapel, Fridays we had an assembly that took like an hour and then the whole timetable was shorter for the day, so classes 30 minutes each instead of 45. This was an independent school.

I have no idea though what other schools do. I suspect it's different for private vs. state and religious vs. not and every school district is different.

I remember being part of a thread on Reddit where the older ones (seniors?) had classes starting at 6.50 and 7 in the morn, so that there was time for sports in the evenings before it got dark. One of them said his school bus came at something mad like 5.30 in the morn. I couldn’t handle that.

Wow, thank you. I was thinking this was such a stupid question ;-)

I like the idea of blue and white days

I guess independent schools there are different; although in general state and private have the same utter mix here!

Many US high schools have a schedule of the same classes at the same times each day. I would say that is pretty typical in my experience. Other schools may have a timetable that alternates or staggers classes.

That is in normal times, though. For the upcoming school year, everything is very much up in the air in many school districts.

When I went to high school in the USA we did pretty much the same subjects every day, in different time slots with a couple of subjects done weekly or twice weekly or every other week (subjects considered less important). I think in some ways its a less well rounded education system but we also studied some subject in greater depth (e.g. maths was split more directly e.g. calculus, trigonometry etc, where in England it was explicitly stated what maths subject we were studying).

And yes, I was always in school by 8am.

Most of the core classes were daily, same time every day. However, less important classes like art/choir/PE would rotate, so PE might be twice, art three times or a study hall, etc etc

Two of my teens start school at 7.55am and finish at 2.55pm.

The other used to start at 8.30am and classes often went on till 5pm, but that was a boarding school.

Although we live a 10 minute walk from school, we're at the start of the bus route, so if my kids took the bus they'd have to get on at 7am and sit on it for 55 minutes. So they walk, although this year one of them will be able to drive if I let her have the car.