The many benefits of flex periods make them an appealing option for middle and high schools. But for those schools looking to start a flex period, there are few resources to help them through the process. This leaves teams of principals, assistant principals, deans, and lead teachers either stuck in indecision or spending too much time trying to figure it out.
While starting a flex period can feel overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. We’ll guide you through the process in this post, starting with a brief description of what a flex period is and how to start one in five straightforward steps.
Why Have Flex Periods?
A flex period, which might also be called a flex block, advisory period, or another name, is a time carved out in the daily schedule for students to go somewhere specific based on their needs.
Many schools start a flex period as a tool for personalized learning or intervention. By carving out dedicated time during the school day for individual support, teachers can spend more time with the students who need it. This approach also gives students more choice and agency over how their time at school is spent. For example, it’s common to use a flex period for making up assignments, study hall, or to seek additional support, such as peer mentoring or targeted tutoring.
However, flex periods also provide opportunities for students to engage in enrichments, clubs, and activities. Using flex periods for these purposes allows schools to provide equitable access to activities that might otherwise only be available after school.
To learn more about what a flex period is and why it’s important, read this blog post.
5 Steps for Implementing a Flex Period in Your School
Step 1: Identify the Purpose & Goals of the Flex Period
Flex periods are most effective when they support a specific purpose in your school. Developing a simple purpose statement will help you clarify your “why” for starting a flex period. Gaining this clarity at the beginning will also make the following steps easier.
If you’re struggling to come up with a purpose statement, try using the example below. Don’t overthink this part. Just capture what feels most important currently so you can continue to move forward.
Example Flex Period Purpose Statement
Starting a flex period at [School Name] will enable us to [insert primary purpose], while also [insert secondary purposes, if applicable].
Once you’ve developed your purpose statement, you’ll want to also identify some preliminary goals. You can always refine these later (in fact, we recommend it after getting some input from your team), but don’t skip this step. Having some goals to start helps ensure that a flex period is worth pursuing and will help you assess if they’re working (and are worth continuing).
When developing your goals, we recommend using the SMART goal-setting process (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). To keep things simple for starters, we suggest limiting your goals to no more than three.
Step 2: Create Time & Space for the Flex Period
It’s likely you’ve already started thinking about when and how you’ll be able to make time in your schedule for a flex period. However, if you first know what you want to accomplish, that will also help you identify the best places to pull time from.
While you need to make sure you meet your state’s requirements around instructional minutes, remember that there is no minimum or maximum time requirement for a flex period. Most schools find they need at least 20 minutes to make it worth it. However, few schools allocate longer than 45 minutes unless they run the schedule less often (like once or twice a week).
Where to Find the Time for Your Flex Period
To follow are some of the more common options to find the time, in order from easiest to implement to hardest. Most schools end up combining two or more of these to land on what works best for their situation:
Adapt your Homeroom or Advisory schedule*
Repurpose minutes from lunchtime
Borrow 1-2 minutes from each passing period between classes
Shorten each class period by 2-5 minutes
Extend the daily start/end time
*If using your Homeroom or Advisory schedule everyday doesn’t give you the required number of instructional minutes, you could also start by using it a certain number of days each week instead of everyday.
Once you’ve found enough minutes to put into a flex period, you need to figure out where it goes in your daily bell schedule. Again, there are no hard-and-fast rules here.
Some schools schedule a flex period late in the day, even as the last period. However, many find that late in the day isn’t the most productive time and interferes with other end of day logistics (like buses). Those schools schedule it earlier in the day, though rarely the first period in the morning, again for consistency of daily housekeeping activities, like attendance.
Pictured below is a before and after example. This school borrowed a few minutes from each period to create their flex period, and they chose to slot it in mid-morning.
Step 3: Build Buy-in for Your Flex Period
Next, and arguably the most important step, is to get buy-in from your community. This includes your teachers and staff, students, their families, and any other groups that might have a particular interest and voice in the direction of your school.
Gaining support from teachers and staff is almost always the most important and critical piece. It makes sense since they’ll be primarily responsible for executing your flex period plan and serving as the backbone of its success. They’ll also likely be charged with communicating about the flex period to other groups, who will be able to tell if they’re bought-in or not.
When determining how to get buy-in from your team, you’ll want to identify their potential objections and motivations. What is needed to get alignment from both the most supportive folks and the most reluctant ones?
Surveying them directly can be beneficial. Here are some questions to explore:
- What opportunities are they most motivated by? Reaching struggling learners? Getting to work with small groups? Providing equitable access to enrichments?
- Which barriers will they see as most problematic? Scheduling and logistics? Lost instructional time? More work?
After you’ve identified the motivators and barriers, craft some talking points to help you present your flex period plan to your teachers and staff. Be sure to highlight the intended benefits and outcomes, and also address how you’ll overcome obstacles.
You can also share results and anecdotes from other teachers and schools that have successfully implemented flex periods.
Again, it’s important to remember getting buy-in will be an ongoing process, but it’s important to start early, especially with your staff, and involve them in ways that fit your school’s culture.
Step 4: Work Out The Logistics
As you prepare for implementation, making sure you have a solid plan will make all of the difference. You’ll also want to have answers ready for your team’s inevitable questions. Doing so will help you maintain the support you’ve already begun building.
Some schools find that spreadsheets and documents work well enough to plan the various aspects of implementation. Others rely on specialized software tools designed to simplify the planning and management of a flex period. Regardless of which direction you take, you may also want to assign specific individuals or small committees to own the creation, maintenance, and communication of your plan.
Step 5: Develop & Communicate Norms
As you finalize the logistics, you’ll likely already be thinking about the norms you’ll want to define for your team. Be sure to include both the day-to-day processes and expectations (like how, when, and where to track attendance), as well as the exceptions (like what happens when a teacher is out sick).
Here are some of the initial norms you’ll want to define:
- Deadlines for submitting flextime requests
- Timelines for notifying students, teachers, and/or administrators
- Acceptable activities for flex period sessions
- Maximum and minimum class sizes, including exceptions to the rule
- Use of public spaces (gym, cafeteria, library)
- Procedures for absent teachers (known in advance and last-minute)
- Attendance procedures (who, when, where)
Once you’ve developed norms, you need to communicate them to your team. You might do this during a regular staff meeting, in an email, or using whatever communication tools are most effective. However you choose to communicate them, we strongly recommend that you have them in writing. This will allow you to easily make changes and updates as you settle into your new flex period.
Inevitably, your norms will be refined over time, and new ones will need to be added. Don’t be surprised if you find some holes soon after implementation. You can also surface any gaps by asking your team for feedback on how things are going after a few weeks. Using a Google Doc or Google Form can help you centrally capture (as well as respond to) feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Take the Next Step to Introduce a Flex Period in Your School
It’s easy to see how a flex period could help your school make meaningful improvements in achievement, attendance, and engagement. However, if your school is like most, working through the steps to make your flex period dream a reality can feel daunting. Don’t let overwhelm halt your progress. There are more resources to help:
Download our Interactive Flex Period Planning Workbook to get fillable worksheets and step-by-step guidance and tips to help start a flex period in your school.
Schedule a demo to see how Securly Flex takes the complexity out of starting and managing a flex period in your school.
