Pali’s last bell of the morning rings promptly every day at 8:30 a.m, urging students to hurry to class. However, Wednesdays are particularly filled with havoc following the implementation of Pali Period, a 40-minute block promoting intervention as well as school-wide drills and workshops. Teachers and students alike are lost in the chaos.
Pali Period was first implemented in 2023, with the goal of finding time for drills, schoolwide messages, and other announcements. At the expense of the somewhat new Pali Period, teachers are left with fewer instructional minutes than ever, forcing them to catch up amidst lagging time.
Social Sciences department teacher David Carini touched on his own experience losing crucial teaching time due to Pali Periods.
“I’d rather have every day be consistent, and it is a bit frustrating sometimes, because I’ll forget that we have a Pali period, and so the class is cut short by 15 minutes,” Carini said.
Originally thought to be a solution for inefficient pre-existing systems for broadcasting messages campus-wide, Pali Period has gained negative teacher sentiment. Carini reminisced about past intervention assemblies, noting how in-person meetings were more productive and engaging then the current Pali Period structure.
“A great thing about having an assembly is that you get to connect with somebody who’s not in your class typically, and it’s just nice to gather in a big group, rather than watching videos,” Carini said.
Students especially feel the unimportant nature of Pali Period. Promoting school messaging once a week feels unnecessary, and at times repetitive.
Senior Anne Kelly commented on the purpose of Pali Period, because while it may be useful to promote mandatory messages, weeks that do not have drills planned are for intervention purposes, left up to teachers who already have intervention-related office hours.
“It’s not like Pali Period is the only time you can meet with your teacher to make up something, you have office hours… [so] it’s just kind of like a waste of time that could instead be instructional time,” Kelly said.
On top of that, midweek is when students tend to experience the largest amount of fatigue following days of Advanced Placement (AP) coursework, exhausting sports, and extracurricular work. In recent times, this combination of items on students’ to do list prompt the need for rest, especially on hump day.
Kelly corroborated this sentiment by expressing how Pali Period poses significant challenges to her daily rhythm, especially while balancing sports and rigorous academics.
“Pali Period disrupts my routine. It interrupts my entire schedule, and when I think I’m in that flow state of classroom activity, [Pali Period] comes and it chops up my blocks and even takes up extra time going to classes,” Kelly said.
On the other hand, Pali’s psychiatric social worker and Mental Health team lead Raquel Perez commented that considering Pali Period is only once a week, it is minimally disruptive and can teach students how to turn academic setbacks into opportunity.
“I agree that it can be a positive disruption… If teachers and students are taking it seriously, if they’re actually wanting to engage, and if the content is actually worthy, then it’s valuable time spent,” Perez said.
However, pushing students through these extra class periods is simply not enhancing the educational environment; rather, Pali Period serves as an educational roadblock in a day that should flow seamlessly.
In short, Pali Period promotes the lowest of school priorities: less education and lagging policy work. Wednesdays were intentionally meant to be a day of prevention and intervention, but instead are turned into a turmoil of hiding under desks for the Great Shakeout, when it should be spotlighting student well-being in other manners.
In remediation of teacher angst, less educational minutes and student fatigue, one viable solution is presented: mandatory intervention periods in a timely manner, rather than every week. Across the Southern California district, this phenomena is not foreign: at Calabasas High School, Wednesdays are designated to end after lunchtime, with an optional intervention period afterward–a possible option for school administration to consider.
At Pali, teachers and students alike agree that there should be fewer Pali Periods. Kelly expressed how this solution would be viable toward maintaining a school forum for messaging while simultaneously using instructional minutes efficiently.
“We should have Pali Period only on some weeks… Otherwise, students won’t sign up for an intervention period and it will just end up wasting the teachers and the students time,” Kelly said.
In the end, time intervention is unavoidable: by law, certain drills must be performed per semester. According to the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Los Angeles high schools have mandatory emergency drills–like fire drills and lockdowns—that must be done each quarter.
However, considering these drills must be conducted a few times per semester, weekly Pali Periods are left in limbo, lacking structure and its original purpose: intervention. On top of it, as a charter school, Pali has the freedom to implement its own policies, and not have to listen to tiresome governing bodies.
Considering this, Pali has ultimate power to eliminate or limit Pali Periods.
Perez noted that in the near future, Pali Periods could be reconfigurated for the better, with one simple thing in mind.
“The purpose of [Pali Period] is for intervention and prevention and to make sure students are getting adequate exposure to things like mental health… I think that is what the intent is, if teachers are doing it correctly.”
