In the world of middle and high schools all across the country, teachers and administrators look for more time to meet the needs of their students. Oftentimes, flex periods are included in the daily schedule to provide that extra time. While finding the time in your bell schedule can take some work, organizing the staff’s offerings and managing student assignments for this flex period is often the biggest hurdle schools have to overcome. Scheduling a flex time can be a logistical nightmare, especially when trying to ensure all students are placed meaningfully and purposefully. This was the problem Edficiency’s founder was facing at his school back in 2015, which led him to create the first version of the software to help solve these problems for his own school, and eventually many more across the country. In this post, we’ll share a bit more about flex time in general and go into more detail about Edficiency, including what it is and how it helps schools.
What is a Flex Period?
To understand Edficiency, it’s important to first understand what flex time looks like in middle and high schools. At its simplest, a flex period is an allotted period of time set in the daily schedule, that usually runs 30-45 minutes most days of the week, where students go to different teachers for differing needs. While extra academic support is the most common purpose, other options can include tailored intervention, enrichment, social-emotional learning, clubs, extracurricular activities, study halls, make-up work, and more. The primary purpose behind a flex period is to give students and teachers more time together.
In creating this additional period, schools often find themselves spending countless hours trying to ensure all teachers have an offering and all students have an assignment somewhere. Then valuable time is spent trying to manage all the offerings, room limits, room numbers, requests, and assignments while hoping students don’t fall through the cracks. Additional time is used to review conflicting teacher requests for students or rooms. And throughout this entire process, there is a constant worry that students know where they are assigned each day, if they showed up, and how staff can locate every student at all times, even with last-minute changes.
Want to learn more about flex periods? Check out our ultimate guide to flex periods here.
What is Edficiency?
Edficiency is the only online scheduling software that simplifies “flex time” operations by automating the process of assigning students each day in middle schools and high schools. Edficiency helps administrators and teachers get time back so they can spend more time focusing on what matters most - students and academics.
To do this, the Edficiency software creates daily class rosters for all the things teachers rarely have time for in traditional classes, like RtI, MTSS supports, intervention, enrichment, social-emotional learning, clubs, extracurricular activities, and more. It has even been used by some schools for scheduling before and after-school tutoring, lunch office hours, or multiple flex periods in a day. The daily assignments are unique for each day, based on student and teacher requests. The system notifies each student of their daily session assignment via email or through multiple options within the system. It handles the conflicting requests, considering many dynamics, such as what admin determines as most important, teacher/student requests, and students’ “default” preferences. The software also sends out email notifications to students each day and allows all staff to see where every student is assigned each day. Teachers can also take attendance, which is accessible in real-time by administrators, so it becomes easy to hold students accountable for this time. Edficiency allows teachers and administrators to move their focus from time-consuming spreadsheets, paper passes, lists and manually checking rosters, to students and their specific needs.
To get a quick visual overview, check out the video below:
Why is Edficiency Important?
With many advantages of flex periods, Edficiency provides schools with more options in making the most of this time. The ability to pull groups of students that they don’t usually have access to at the same time is one of the benefits of a flex period. Teachers can do this across class periods by needs, and Edficiency affords them greater ease in creating and scheduling groups within the software. This in turn, leads to increased personal learning opportunities, as students are able to get the help that is more geared towards them. Increased student choices is another advantage of flexible scheduling. Edficiency offers students the opportunity to request teachers and sessions that meet their needs and interests, which gives students greater autonomy and a more fulfilled school experience. These are just a few of the flex period benefits Edficiency makes easier for schools to achieve, but you can read about more here.
Schools that use Edficiency have experienced positive results for administrators, teachers, and students. Over 90% of teachers and administrators that use Edficiency believe the software is easy to use and saves them time. Almost 90% believe Edficiency has contributed to an increase in student achievement. Customer support is always there for questions, whether about our software, flex time plans, or flex scheduling strategy. As former teachers and administrators, the team at Edficiency prides itself on being responsive, adding value, and providing top-notch customer support, even receiving a 5/5 customer support rating on Software Advice, a third-party that independently collects and verifies reviews of software.
Edficiency has paved the way for schools to get time back and meet the needs of their students. Schools across the United States have found Edficiency contributes to an increase in student achievement, is user-friendly, and saves time. So, if you are a school struggling to find the balance between scheduling your flex period and meeting the needs of your students, schedule a demo here to learn more about how Edficiency could save you time for what matters.