Student Schedules

Preparing Student Class Schedules

If you were not a member of the Weston (Massachusetts) High School class of 1968, you can simply treat this discussion as an example of preparing student schedules manually. Computers (quite rudimentary compared to today's laptops and tablets) were used to prepare the senior high school schedules but apparently the size of the junior high school then (300 students altogether) made manual preparation still the best choice.

Unfortunately I did not save my schedule cards for 7'th and 8'th grade but I have my brother's (class of 1971) card. It is of the same kind and was prepared in the same fashion.

It also has some of the same defects as my own junior high schedule cards notably the faintness of print for some subjects.

I already knew that in junior high, we went from room to room to take different classes from different teachers.

Looking at the imperfections you can figure out (or for all you Weston alumni, recall) that we were grouped differently for different subjects.

The sample schedule card shown here has Social Studies entries that are are darker, showing that students were grouped differently for social studies classes. Schedule cards were prepared by being fed through a duplicating machine several times, say, first to fill in the English classroom assignments, then to fill in the math classroom assignments, and so on.

The printing for French is skewed a tad which meant that students were grouped differently for French also.

At the bottom right are codes (1, 2, 1, 1, 1) which identify the class groupings for the teachers.. The darkness of the "2" suggests that that was the code (or section) for Social Studies.

The hand typed "8-9" at the bottom stands for eighth grade, room 9 as homeroom (where students go at the beginning of each day).

For my seventh grade year the codes on my schedule card were "AR 2 O5" . I knew right off that the "AR" had something to do with English because both that code and the entries for English were very faint. The "2" and the Social Studies entries were a little darker and the rest of the entries were darkest. So each student was in three sections, one for English, one for Social Studies, and one for everything else. Schedule cards were run through the duplicating machine three times. At first I thought that the O5 was "zero five" but later found out that the O stood for orange. There were also the colors red, yellow, and green.

The homeroom teacher said, "You section is printed at the lower right corner) which section for me was "O5". Soon I found out that the 7'th grade had six "main" sections (red platoon) R1, R2, and R3 and (orange platoon) O4, O5, and O6. Think of the color groups in the Monopoly game.

Shortly I also found out that the various English sections, as coded at the bottom of the schedule card, were: AR, 1R, 2R, 3R, 4O, 5O, and 6O standing for the same R1, R2, R3, O4, etc.sections (plus AR).. This confused some students because they might have been in the R2 English section and not see classmates in the R2 main section. Such confusion would have been eliminated if they used different colors such as purple or brown, or letters such as B and C (in addition to AR). Not too many students had the same section for all subjects which (for the section R2) would have resulted in the codes "2R 2 R2" on the schedule card.

Students must have been assigned to English sections based on achievement in prior grades (5'th and 6'th grades) although I suspect that the color groups were invented to hide the distinction of honors group versus remedial group.

For my 8'th grade year there were separate English sections for grammar/composition, reading/literature, and spelling/vocabulary, and separate sections for social studies, and schedule cards were run through the duplicating machine five times each.. The codes on my schedule card read "5 5 4 O5 R3" Again, the "main" section was the last code on the line, here, "R3".

I'm sure that considerable labor was needed to separate out the student schedule cards for the various sections given the different permutations of English, Social Studies, and "main section" for each student. But the following procedure might seem to be expedient (not sure whether they used it back then). With six sections for the class of 1968 (R1, R2, R3, O4, O5, and O6) there might be six staff persons each holding the cards for one main section that is run through the duplicating machine. Then they staff could play rummy or gin, as in having a seventh person reading off the names for Social Studies section R1. "Who has John Doe?" Everyone riffles through his stack of 25 or so cards and whoever has John Doe throws out that card. "Who has Jane Roe?" Everyone riffles through his stack of 25 cards ... etc, Repeat for the next Social Studies section R2, and so on. Soon we have six new piles for the six social studies sections, and we run them through the duplicating machine one pile at a time. Now it is time to do the English sections. "Who has John Doe?" Everyone riffles through his stack of 25 cards, now sorted by social studies sections, to pick out the cards one at a time for each English section in turn.

An alternate form of index card at that time had a row of holes across the top or in some cases all around the perimeter. For sorting purposes, selected holes are cut away to the edge with a special punch. For example my 7'th grade card might have had the AR English hole, the "2" Social Studies hole, and the O5 main section hole notched out. Then inserting a coat hanger wire or knitting needle into one hole all the way through the stack would quickly drop out out the 25 or so cards for the respective section or classroom.

Given that separate sections (for my junior high years) were for English and Social Studies only, yet another way of preparing the schedule cards would be to print only the main section room assignments and have the homeroom teachers announce and the students write in the English and Social Studies room assignments upon arrival on the first day of school. Weston, Massachusetts was one of the more wealthy towns and the idea of making the students do a little preparation work may have not gone over well. But, as seen in the example, some of the printing came out faint and students did write in the entries.

While there were three sections in a color group, they only came together for math classes. Two sections (O5 and O6 in my case) came together for gym classes. Since there was just one art teacher and one music teacher, each section had different times for those subjects.

Last updated June 23, 2014

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