The Benefits of Personalized Learning All Day Friday

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Front of Bingham high school, where students can come on Fridays to have personalized learning time with their teachers during the Covid pandemic.

Do you remember when we had Fridays off for school? It was amazing right? We had time to focus on other responsibilities, including homework. It was so much easier to come into school on Fridays and ask for help—not only for one hour—it lasted until 1:00. These days were extremely helpful when you had essays and other big projects to work on, as well as a great tool to use if you were behind. Having school off on Friday has many benefits to the students, teachers, and parents in so many ways. 

Open Fridays allow students to get help with large projects instead of having only an hour to try and get as much help as they can. Students can get very behind on homework and responsibilities because these assignments may have a lot of steps. This time can be used to get a more in-depth explanation of how to approach assignments and also allows one on one time with the teacher instead of them having to give a lot of students help. 

Ms. Goff, resource math teacher at Bingham in the 2020–2021 school year said, “Having Fridays be personalized learning days is beneficial because it allows teachers to work on paperwork and prepare more engaging lesson plans.” Having Fridays for personalized learning allows the teachers to catch up on their work while helping students catch up on theirs. Teachers can get behind on grading papers and lesson plans. If they don’t have students come in for personalized learning, they can fully focus on grading and can do it in school rather than at home. Ms. Patrizzi, who is a current history teacher at Bingham, says, “Having Fridays open was beneficial to the students because during class it is hard to focus on every student and have one-on-one time with them during normal class time. If they did open Fridays up again the students should be required to come to personalized learning if they have a 70 percent or lower in their class.”

Photo Credit: Alexis Ingraahm

No school on Fridays is also helpful for parents.  They don’t have to worry about driving their child as early to school for the day.  This is a nice day off. If the child does need a ride to school, Friday personalized learning started at 10:00 AM, and you could come anytime between 10:00 – 1:00PM. Parents wouldn’t have to wake up as early as regular school days to drive them to the school. 

Instead of school on Friday, students could get the homework done that we got from that week, rather than getting more homework while we are in school. This gives students an extra day to catch up on school work, rather than having to be in school learning a new topic. Students also have jobs and life responsibilities, so they may not have much time during the week to get school work done. So if we don’t have school on Fridays and open it up to personalized learning it can help students have a more free schedule to focus on their responsibilities.