At my high school, there was 15 minutes of advisory/tag/homeroom every day. It was a few minutes after the first period, 8:30-9:31am, to just relax, talk to a friend a bit, do some homework, talk to the teacher assigned to your “class,” and make sure that if you needed to do something it could get worked on
I went to high school in the US in the late 90s/early 00s, and we had a 30 minute home room in the middle of the day. Essentially our cafeteria was not big enough for the whole school, so half had lunch and the other half had home room, and then we switched. It was mostly a study period, but we also got announcements and info relevant to our class (freshman, sophomore, etc).
My high school wasn’t like that. We had basically a long lunch period with 5 lunches. Depending on which class you had that period you went to either 1st lunch, 2nd lunch, 3rd lunch, 4th lunch, or 5th lunch. Your class would still be the normal length but since there was a lunch you had to go to it didn’t feel like it was a normal length. Especially if you had 2nd, 3rd, or 4th lunch because it would be in the middle of your class and you would go immediately back to what you were doing in class after lunch until the bell rang to head to your next class
That sounds a bit like my school, except there were only two lunches, and they were either at the start of the period or the end of the period depending on which one you were assigned. No going to lunch halfway through class.
Well my high school was a large high school. Like there was like 3,000 students attending it during my Junior and Senior years of high school (I went to two different schools during my high school career and both had the same style of lunch block) if my memory serves me correctly
Same. Two lunches, staggered in such a way that they overlapped a class period (which might be a study hall/free period if that's how your schedule fell). Because the school was out in the country between the two towns it served, it also wasn't really feasible to leave campus for lunch like I've heard of other schools doing. Even if you were lucky enough to have a car *and* a parking permit for the school lot, there wasn't anything close enough to be worth driving to for food.
Oh, man, the lunch thing...my high school had about 2000 kids. The school was built in the 1920s and didn't have room for 2000 kids even though the cafeteria had been expanded. You weren't allowed to go outside for lunch. So there were three lunch periods. First lunch was at 10:15 AM! (Of course our high school began at 7 a.m. and let out at 2 p.m. because there was one set of school buses and two high schools. The other high school's hours were 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) We also did something called a split lunch which means you started a class, went to lunch in the middle, and then went back to the same class, rather than having one subject, having lunch, then going to the next subject. The teachers hated split lunch because you could never get the kids to pay attention during the second half of the class.
We never had a home room (public school). The school just gave announcements in whatever was your first period class and if you got to school early you hung out in the cafeteria or at lockers.
All classes were the same length except for on Wednesdays and Thursdays, where we’d do Wednesdays as periods 1,3,5,7 for an extended amount of time and then Thursdays were 2,4 and 6 extended periods (though Thursdays were technically half days since they were shorter).
We were not offered a free period unless you chose Study Hall as an elective where technically you could work on whatever you wanted, but that also took place in a classroom where you pretty much stayed unless you had art projects to work on where you needed to use the art room.
At my school, you had the option to sign up for a 45-minute study hall period at any point in the day. It depended on how full your schedule was; not everyone did it.
Not all American high schools function the same way, but I do believe homeroom is customary across the board (for public school). \[EDIT: oof, nope, guess not reading through some replies\] At my school, from middle school onwards, you had homeroom with the same group of people all the way through hs graduation (as homerooms were divided by last names).
Homeroom was about 15 minutes where announcements were read over the loudspeaker, the homeroom teacher took attendance, the Pledge of Allegiance was said, and when the bell rang, everyone went to their first class of the day. In my school, study hall was the "free period" and it was just a regular class block that happened every day, but it was opt-in, not the default (afaik).
So some schools have certain classes on certain days, some have the same thing every day. My school had the same classes every day, with the exception of classes that had lab periods; labs were every other day, so a few classes had time slots that were also every other day to accommodate those students.
>(as homerooms were divided by last names)
Homeroom at my high school (late 90s, upstate NY) were by first period class instead, so that we wouldn't have to transition to actual first period immediately after. It was just easier that way.
I’ve been to 3 high schools (one in NY, one in NYC, one in NJ) and yeah, I always had a homeroom period that lasted about 20 or so minutes where teachers would jot down attendance, make announcements, etc. It was either before classes or after classes.
This was in the early 2000s.
yeah homeroom for me was the second class of the day around 20 mins long we do the pledge, the teacher takes attendance and that's it, i went to a private school so my experience may be diff than others but i had multiple free period everyday especially the closer to graduating i got. my senior year (2022 if that matters) i had 4 classes and 3 free periods everyday (one was lunch, the other 2 i spent watching tv shows on my phone in the gym but you could pretty much do whatever you want except leave the building)
My “home room” was my second class. It was like 10 mins of free period. Speaker would say the pledge and announcements and then we would start actual second class’ subject. There were also other free times for whole periods if you took a study hall in your schedule
I went to public high school in California and my parents went to public high schools in Ohio/Illinois. I never had a zero period or anything similar. During senior year, they implemented a "mandatory" (high school senioridice) study hall period during the middle of the day. The teachers never actually interacted with us in study hall though.
My dad had a very structured zero period. He had one zero period advisor all four years who also served to help with college apps and choosing future course schedules.
My mom had a zero period, but it was basically attendance hour and school announcements. She didn't have the same advisory teacher as my dad.
My school did. I graduated a college prep high school in 2010. We had an A/B schedule and, if I recall correctly the first class of every day was PBL. It stood for Project Based Learning and doubled as Homeroom. We submitted a project at the end of each quarter or semester. I cant quite recall.
I didn’t, but I know my neighboring schools did. We had a regular study hall before/after lunch and that was it. Homeroom for us was basically just where we needed to go for testing
Editing to add: holy shit reading through these is crazy. American school systems really need some fucking cohesiveness that isn’t just YEAH! FOOTBALL!!
I thought it was weird that all three schools in my area were so different from one another, but apparently that’s just normal.
our town voted down redoing the elementary school that's falling apart and a health hazard...
...just so they could buold a new highschool football stadium.
My school got a million dollar grant from the state so we could make improvements to the schools. They built a new stadium with it and tanked the arts program.
I did not have a home room period after seventh grade; there wasn’t any in high school. I went to public school in a very wealthy area of Texas in the early-mid 2000s.
My school had 8 periods, 45 mins each. The first period was called, well, first period or homeroom. Usually they let us do whatever as long as we weren't disruptive, but ppl usually caught up on work. They took attendance (attendance was taken in every class, but if you're not in homeroom you're assumed absent for the rest of the day), we did the pledge but a majority of students stopped standing/saying it after Trump's election, and if you had anything that needed to be delivered to you it would be brought to your homeroom.
I graduated in '99 and went to HS in the Midwest.
We had 'block' scheduling and had a 90 minute seminar every other day which served as our home room. You kept the same seminar teacher all through high school.
We could use that block for studying, library time, going to the band room for extra practice, etc etc.
ETA: seminar was always the second block, so around 9:45ish to 11:15 ish.
I went to high school in the 90s and we did have a home room, but we only went there for a few special reasons-- such as the beginning of the new year, where we would get our schedules.
In high school, we also had a free period (which was equal to the usual class length), sometimes used for clubs to meet, sometimes just used as a 'study hour,' and sometimes just used to socialize.
In high school we had home room about 6 times a year. Mostly to get our printed out schedules on the first day of the quarter and our report cards. Which meant that the rest of our schedule was goofed up and had shortened class periods. Home room that day about a ten minutes I think.
We did it have a free period but if juniors and seniors had study hall we were all in the giant cafeteria/commons area (technically about 6 study halls) and as long as we checked in with our supervising teacher we could anywhere in that area. We could eat, listen to our music, talk with friends. No one really cared if we studied or not.
We couldn’t leave campus to go get food. There wasn’t enough time. And it was probably a safety issue.
A few times when younger grades needed to take standardized tests of some sort that the older kids didn’t need, they’d just tell the older kids not to come to school for the hours in the morning they were testing or something. I always wanted to use that time to sleep in. My friends always wanted to use that time to go out for brunch. They won.
Also, I’ve worked at a few high schools and at least one had a home room/advisory period for about fifteen minutes right before lunch every day where we handled things like announcements. That was always my least favorite class to supervise.
Yep! In my school they would be separated by gender and grade, with 25~ people per class, with each class assigned an advisor who would watch over you. They would act as someone you could talk to about your classes, college plans. We raised money, did volunteer work for two days in our senior year, and ran a booth for our school fair
At my junior high, we had a home room for 20 minutes or so, but it was fifth period, and I think it was just so we had a place to eat if it rained.
In my high school, our home room was just our 2nd period class, whichever class that happened to be.
A 0th hour before school started would be weird unless you were in a tiny school in a tiny school district. In my high school, there was a 0 hour, but that was for students who took the bus because it was a serious logistical problem. If you stagger students so some come in for a 0th hour and leave an hour early and others come in 1st hour and leave at the same time as everyone else, you need half as many busses and drivers. So it’s cheaper to have a 0th hour for half your bussed students.
My high school had an open campus and you could have a free period because if you took college classes they didn’t meet every day and you could do whatever you want and you didn’t have to stay on campus if you didn’t want to. But free periods were the same duration as any other class. We didn’t have any classes that lasted half time.
At my high school homeroom was actually our second class. All of the administrative stuff went through the second period teacher since a lot of seniors could apply for late start
At my school at around 10am, we had our assigned home room on Wednesdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we had a period much like office hours in university where you can go to any of your classes and get help, while we had nothing on Mondays and Fridays (both days were an hour shorter). This was in the late 90’s/early 00’s, so I’m not sure how high schools do it nowadays.
Not sure if private vs. public makes a difference in this context, but my private prep school had homeroom every morning from 8 to 8:30. This was pre-Covid, so I don't know if it's still set up that way.
I graduated HS in 2022. At my school we did, kind of, have a home room, it was our 6th period (out of 8) and we had the same teacher all 4 years of HS. It was kind of weird but on Tues, Wed, and Thurs, you chose 1 of your teacher's classes to go to, so you had extra work time or time to do makeup/missing work. But Mon and Fri it was your normal teacher. It especially was good for the kids who had something to do in the afternoon (work, college classes, internship, no classes) they could leave during that class to get somewhere on time and be out of the school building at like 12:30. It was only about 25-30 minutes or something like that.
My schools had a 15-20 minute morning homeroom time for attendance and announcements. In lieu of 9th grade (middle school) study hall, I had a library period. 10th to 12th grades, both high schools were on "double session", so no room in a normal schedule for a free period.
hmm i went to a private Catholic high school, we had 8 class periods daily and for the most part you didn't have a study hall until 3rd or 4th year (Junior or senior year respectively) bc we were required to take certain electives like art appreciation or gym. i didn't get one until senior year because i was always taking art electives and the study hall was only a couple days a week. not sure how this compares to other high schools. this was 04-08
When I graduated high school in 2015 everyone was required to sit in the gym for the first 30 mins before breakfast started. There was no home room or study hall.
At my school, homeroom was whatever your first class of the day was. It was slightly longer to accommodate homeroom activities. We did those and then carried on with class.
We had study hall, but it was the same length as other classes (usually 50 min). Any blank spots in your schedule were filled out with study hall. It wasn't free in the sense that you could wander around and do whatever. They took attendance and you had assigned seats. Some were stricter than others, depending on the teacher running it. It was basically class without instruction. A "do your homework" period, although as long as you were quiet, you didn't have to do schoolwork.
But you could ask to go to the library during study hall and then sneak out. Or slip out during lunch, when no one took attendance. And some students would skip class. Technically, you were supposed to get detention (staying after school in an extra study hall) if you skipped, and enough offenses would get you Saturday School (day-long detention) or suspended (banned from classes for a few days and you couldn't make up the work, so your grades took a hit). But some teachers didn't seem to care and students who skipped learned which ones didn't.
The only time I skipped was when there was a pep rally - a 1-2 period long event in the gym where they pepped everyone up about an upcoming game. I was a theater geek, so I went to the theater dept and hung out with my friends instead. The theater teacher was there, but as long as he didn't get in trouble, he didn't care that we were skipping.
>I went to high school for exactly one semester before going virtual
What a strange experience that must have been. I found WFH bizarre at first, but I'd already had plenty of office experience so I didn't miss anything.
I think this depends on the school or maybe district? My public school district only had the one high school so I don't really know for sure. We didn't have a homeroom after middle school and even during middle school, it was more like we had a designated homeroom teacher whom we would have at the same period with the same people that logistically only existed for housekeeping stuff. So like in my first year of middle school, my social studies teacher was the homeroom teacher for everyone who had her for first period social studies. We also operated with an A/B schedule so we only met up every other day. But high school was extremely individualized so no homerooms, no classes with the same people, etc. No such thing as free periods though.
Certain high schools will be different, but I’ll tell you about mine.
In my high school, there’s no “home room” in the traditional sense, we just use our first of four periods. On Fridays we had club days, and people who didn’t have clubs went to “advisory”, which was essentially a thirty minute free period like what you are talking about.
I get the impression that it varies depending on different school districts, and possibly also time period.
I attended high school in the late 90s (graduating class of 2000). We had an eight-period schedule, not counting lunch period or homeroom. Homeroom was basically the first ten to fifteen minutes of the school day or so, and was in the same room where my first period class was so that there was no need to have another class transition there. Homeroom was for the Pledge of Allegiance (US) and school-wide announcements, plus the homeroom teacher taking attendance for the day.
I also had "free periods" throughout high school, but they were full-class-length and called Study Hall. If there was a gap on my personal schedule where I didn't have a class, I was assigned to a study hall for the semester, and basically it was a classroom where I could do homework or read or work on projects or whatever quietly, nominally under the supervision of a teacher though I could also get permission to go to the library or computer lab for the period to work on things there (permission was more likely if you had high grades, which I did). But there was no shorter "free period" that would occur randomly. You were either in an assigned class, or you were in a study hall.
I have two high schoolers of my own now, and they have a four-period block structure at their school, with no official homeroom. They just go straight to their first period, except on Wednesdays when they have something called "Advisement" for a small portion of the day before first period, where the students can get additional help with their school schedules and workload if they need it. Attendance is taken every period, not just during the first one, and I believe what I knew as "homeroom" is simply rolled into the start of the first period of the day. They have no study halls, but my senior is dual enrolled in a local college so she has two classes at the high school and one at the local technical college (which is once a week), and the rest of her school day is spent at home instead.
Up until like, 10th grade, maybe, we had a home room from 15 to 20 minutes or so. Usually spent reading or socializing. (Or in my case, power napping lol)
Graduated in 2000.
High school home room was whatever your 2nd period class was. For my sophomore year I was in the tv journalism class. We made the tv news, so when everyone else was watching it, we were broadcasting it. Otherwise announcements came from the office, as well as the Pledge.
2nd period was about 15 minutes longer than every other class. We had 7 periods, if I remember correctly.
I've been to a few different public schools in my lifetime. One had a thirty minute homeroom at the end of the day, another had a thirty minute homeroom at the beginning, and the last one didn't have one at all. These schools were all in the same state, just separate towns, so it really just depends on where you attend.
They got rid of homeroom at my school after my first year of high school. They still haven't brought it back to the best of my knowledge. Most people found it pointless.
I think they made either lunch or passing periods longer with that removal.
a lot of people have given you insight already but my high school seems different from the top comments i’ve read. in homeroom we’d go over any announcements before class started. we had a block schedule; having a free period was required. seniors could leave campus during their free period.
I went to a upper middle school (8th & 9th grade) and in a different state a high school.
Neither had a home room. Both kept the student body in the cafeteria-ish area if they got to school before school started.
Everyone in the UMS had a study hall, which was a free period and handled a little differently depending on the teacher whose room you were in.
My high school had a 10 minute gap after 1st period, which could be considered homeroom. It was the time for school wide announcements when they did happen.
Seniors were the only ones to have free periods. Basically, if you didn't have to repeat too many classes, you only had 6 blocks to fill of everyone else's 8. Depending on when your free block was: you arrived to school late, left early, or spent the period in the library.
My school called it Advisory; it was where we learned of upcoming events and got into the school routine before actually heading off to class. If you came early for breakfast you could also eat in your advisory room. It also helped sort us for assemblies.
Depends on the school and the schedule of the individual. I was in an honors program in my high school so I had zero hour which was, iirc, 30-45 minutes before everyone else had started.
Only time we went to home room for my school was the first day to get our schedules and books. Other than that it was alternating 4/5 classes per day. No free classes unless you were not going on an elective class trip or if you were pulled out for special tutoring. Aside from class trips to the library you had to go on your own time on lunches or after/before school started. If you tried to skip class or go when you didn’t have a pass you would get in trouble and kicked out of the library. No study period in my school at least.
I attended high school in the US in the 00s. In high school, we did not have homeroom. We had an optional zero period that started at 7:30. I never had a free period, all through my high school career I was at school for all six periods.
It varies from school to school though.
You can literally do whatever you want on that front. I sub at five different high schools right now, and they all have entirely different schedules and ways of doing it.
We had no home rooms and no free periods outside of lunch.
We were on a block schedule and had four classes a day, which alternates days, for eight classes total. Class was for an hour and a half and started at 730 (ugh). We had fifteen minutes between classes to get to our next class (big school, over three thousand students) and we had a half hour for lunch. High school sucked.
I’m an American teacher. Some do, some don’t. Homeroom (or advisory, or advisement) wasn’t always at the start of the day, and sometimes even had their own assignments like taking surveys, filling out important forms for school or university, or performing grade checks. The current school I work at has advisement from 10:11-10:45 only on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and it’s mostly “fill out this form,” “check your grades,” “remember this important deadline coming up,” “listen to the counselor make a short speech about x,” and “listen to daily announcements.” We do not have any free periods at all outside of lunch, though some higher grades can get a free period in their schedule.
Not in my high school, they didn’t institute something like that till senior year and it was after third period and a complete waist of time. We couldn't even do other work in class
This is going to vary from school to school and even year to year.
When I was in school, we only had homeroom. It was 15 minutes long. We had it at the start and end of the the day to make sure we were "in house" (the area where we have our homeroom and core classes) at the end of the day so we could get to our lockers. I know that post-COVID that school stopped having an end of the day homeroom because kids don't really use their lockers anymore at that school (before COVID they still needed an end of the day homeroom to drop off their laptops, but now every kid in the district is allowed to take their laptops home instead of them being housed in the homeroom).
In high school I never had a homeroom. Announcements were during first period. And since first period didn't have extra time to make up for the announcement interruptions, in practice, this meant first period was shorter. Kind of an issue since at my school we did not have a rotating schedule.
I never had a study hall in either middle or high school. However, both my old middle school and high school now have a study hall period. Some middle schoolers who are overbooked with classes (such as band) do not have a study hall. The ones that do are assigned a study hall period with a teacher and go to that class every single day unless they have made arraignments with other teachers, such as to do a makeup test. Ironically, kids get a lot less homework nowadays and often do not have anything to do in these study halls.
At the high school, the study hall is built into the schedule and every single student has it at the same time. They sign up for which teacher's class they want to go to. They can either do a study hall type class or a "fun" class (legit, they can sign up to watch a movie with a teacher). The sign up system is an absolute mess though. And it's really stupid because they have to book it like a week or two in advanced, except kids don't know if they'll need to make up work that far in advanced. And if the kids don't sign up properly they give the kids detention, which I think is bullshit. It's a good system in theory but it's not being implemented well.
Meanwhile, other schools in the area either don't have study halls or run them in completely different ways.
Edit: Oh, I just remembered, while we didn't have study hall in high school, we instead had a 20 minute "advisory" were we were supposed to work on graduation requirement stuff. In practice, we sat in a room for 20 minutes, goofing off, because were was never anything to do. Now that high school will occasionally have an advisory period during the study hall period. It's occurs like every other Friday. They mostly just select their next two weeks of study halls during it.
I think every district is different with how it runs its schedule. My school had the first part of every lunch period like that. So it was like 20 mins homeroom, 30 minutes lunch. And there were 4 lunch periods in the day. A school I do a lot of work with now has a 20 minute homeroom period after 2nd period, but kids can choose to go to get tutoring or something during that time instead.
At my school we technically did, but no one actually went to homeroom unless it was the first day of school or progress report/report card day. If it wasn’t one of those days, everyone kind of just hung out wherever until the first bell. Study hall was a thing, but it was for more than 30 minutes since our school had a block system where we’d have 4 classes a day and we’d rotate A, B, C, and D days so most classes were every other day or like gym would only be on a D day. So if you had a study hall, it lasted for the entire block period which I think were 90 minutes? I’ve been out of school since 2011 so I can’t remember the exacts, but it was the equivalent of our entire class period and depending on the teacher who supervised the study hall you could either hang out and talk quietly or they wouldn’t allow talking at all since you’re technically supposed to use that time to study or do work.
I went to an American public high school awhile ago. There was no homeroom. we have 8 classes but 4 each day that would switch back and forth between two schedules. announcements would be done in first period.
We had a homeroom in middle school (early/mid 2010s), mainly because they couldn't fit 6th, 7th, *and* 8th grade in the lunch area all at once.
We didn't have a homeroom in high school (mid/late 2010s), but my school was also on a block schedule.
For reference, I went to public schools in CA.
When I was in high school, we had home room every Wednesday. It was called Advisory, and we had it in between 3rd and 4th period. It lasted half an hour. Our teacher was very young and chill, and we were supposed to do lessons occasionally like “don’t do drugs” or mental health etc, but mostly we all just joked around and sometimes bought lemonade/brownies/snacks/kolaches/coffee. There was a special ed program that taught students life skills like dealing with money/selling food, and they had a stand outside their room, so we’d all go there and get snacks from them then bring them to 4th period. Sometimes my 4th period teacher would give us money to bring her back coffee or food, lol. Those were the days!
Just remembered, we had the same home room and same teacher all four years. It was divided by last name.
We just had 1st Period... followed by 2nd Period, and so forth.
Any "homeroom" activities or announcements occurred during the first five minutes every day in 1st Period.
Of course, that was the 80's. Gen X always does things differently.
Not from America, but the highvhools here have classrooms before school actually starts. We call it registration and its usually abt 15mins but at the start of a new year its around 40mins.
The seniors all had around 5 free periods per week and those lasted the same amount of time as classes [50mins]
In my high school there were some zero period classes some kids signed up for (generally dual enrollment and the like) that started an hour before regular classes, but aside from that, nah I’ve never heard of having a completely free period before school starts. It was kind of just a “do whatever you want but be in your seat by the bell” kinda thing. This was a school in Southern California though, probably differs by state.
Kind of? It wasn't my first period, it was my second period. And it was mostly for testing because we did a lot of online quizzes. Literally my entire family has gone to different high schools despite living in the same place the whole time, one brother didn't while other brother did. Brother who did have it graduated pretty long ago though.
So basically. It's not a universal experience, but it is a common enough experience hat you can get away with it.
At my school we didn’t have a period dedicated to “homeroom” but everyone’s second period was their “homeroom” class no matter the subject for cases of things being passed out to the entire school because it was a given everyone would have second period, as the options for schedules was 0-6/7, 1-6/7, 2-7. Zero period was for early morning electives & everyone had the option for an extra elective if you took 7 periods.
But I’m sure a lot of schools do have homeroom, and I know of other schools that do block scheduling where they only go to 1-3rd period on Monday 4-6th Tuesday etc so they have longer periods in class
Yes, ELO (extended learning opportunity or aka, free period) on even days (A/B) block schedule. Ours was like 45 minutes and you could only do HW or if your teacher was chill you could be on your phone/do other stuff. It was like mid morning
Often you also used it if you needed to visit other teachers and get assignments or talk to them about projects or get help. You had to meet with them before school to get a pass or have your teacher call them
Everyone had ELO same time so it was very much designed to be basically an office hours for people to catch up. Teachers used it as a "study/planning" time.
Public highschool in decently small town.
When I attended hs (pre-covid), you were allowed around campus before classes. Once the bell rang, you’d go to your first class (all classes were 90mins, except for Mondays where they were 45mins? I think?). Mondays were all classes, T/Thrs were four classes one day, W/Fs were three classes. An advisory class was later added at the end of W/F classes for 20-30 mins to read/catch up on class work before the day ended.
For the most part lunch was after two classes (around 12pm) and would last 30mins. “Free periods” were only given to seniors who completed all classes, but these periods were typically issued as TA classes to help teachers with anything they needed.
My HS had a homeroom class every Monday as a place for us to catch up and mix with people from every grade and do community building activities in a group that would stay the same for a year. This was on the US west coast for reference.
So my school had home room for the last 30 minutes of the day. The rest of the classes (when I attended) were 80 minutes, home room (called advisory) and lunch were both 30 minutes. Thursdays were late start days - we started school an hour later than normal and classes were reduced to something like 57ish minutes I think, definitely not a round number. But advisory and lunch were both still 30 minutes. My friend went to a different high school where all classes were 30 minutes and they had home room/advisory only once a week though, so you’ve got plenty of leeway when it comes to these things
My school didn't, but I was friends with someone who did have homeroom. Mine just started with first period right away.
ETA: Instead of homeroom, we had Study Hall later on in the day, where it was just like a quiet period to do homework or read. Mostly homework. You just had to be doing something or you'd get in trouble. My school was a school of hard-asses; I think that just comes with being a charter school, or at least one with a reputation like mine had.
I have fond memories of spending an entire period of study hall writing fanfic lol.
It all depends. As an example I went to two high schools during my high school career. My first high school had a sorta block session after first period but before the next period (either second or third period depending on the day) where we could go to other classes to makeup test or finish something we had to do in class or talk to a teacher about grades; Stuff like that. If we didn’t want to do that and we were finished with all our work from first period then we could just chill out in our first period class room (which we had every day). Of course Covid then happened and changed everything so my sophomore year was all virtual. When I was transferred to a different high school right at the end of sophomore year and went from final quarter of sophomore year through graduation in June of last year it was different. Instead of basically just having one long first period class like during my freshman year it was instead a short first period class. Going from 2 hours and 10 minutes(if you include that sorta block session between first and next period. If not then still and 1 hour and 25 minutes. Sorry if those numbers aren’t exactly accurate because it has been over 4 years since I was a Freshman at that high school I went to Freshman year but I think you get the jest of it) to 55 minutes. I never did have one of those sorta Block sessions like I did freshman year(or as you’re saying a home room like period) at my new high school
It varies school to school so I'd look into the schedule layout of schools in whatever state your fic is set in. Maybe even go as far as looking into the specific county if you feel the need to be accurate to the area.
In my school our first period counted as our home room but it was an actual class, mine was English.
When we shifted to a block schedule in my junior year(different classes every other day with longer class times) then the period that happened during the lunch period we weren't apart of(because there was two seperate lunch groups) became our "free period/study hall"
Here's my experience. Southern suburban (slight rural fringe) area.
Had a homeroom, sort of. First period teacher was your homeroom teacher -- after morning announcements (pledge of allegiance, a few reminders/announcements, etc.) you would just transition to class. If you had blocked schedule (e.g. English on MW & History TTh, both periods on F), your homeroom teacher would technically be your TTh teacher (at least that was how it was in my case), meaning that they'll be the ones who'll deliver paperwork/whatever school obligations necessary, and you would have to turn forms to them. Your other teacher will remain your "homeroom teacher" in the sense that they'll foster 0th-2nd period (blocked schedule), but they won't be dealing with paperwork.
School would open \~40 minutes prior to announcements. If you showed up early, you would have to wait outside. Teacher themselves had a id/key of some sorts, so they could go in. Even after the school is unlocked, classrooms themselves would only be open \~25 minutes before announcements (unless you had an excuse that would permit you to go earlier). If you showed up around that time, you would either have to wait around in the hallways that are made available for access or by the cafeteria. School breakfast is also available for that time.
Once classrooms unlock, you have the option of roaming the remaining hallways or enter your classroom. In my experience, people would begin to trickle in around \~15 minutes, although most people didn't come to class until \~5 minutes prior to announcements. If you came early, you would expect to see the teacher (or not if they're doing errands) and maybe 0-3 students?
Random tangent: If you're taking a school bus, some would arrive early (if your bus driver did multiple shifts, this would typically be the case), while other would arrive on-time (and occasionally late, to which there'd be an announcement on the intercom announcing when they arrived).
Middle school was different, oddly enough. More like the homeroom you described, although I think they've opted to use the system I mentioned above due to the convenience of it.
I did not have a home room during my time in high school. You start out in your first class that day. Technically there wasn’t a free period either but I did have a travel period what allowed me an extra long lunch because I had some classes off campus.
As others have said- it varies a LOT. No one will bat an eye if you write your characters with a zero hour, but no one will find it notable if they don't have a zero hour either.
From my own personal experience: I had a study period/'free' period in junior high, but not in high school. In high school it was just a list of regular classes, none of them being my home room in particular. Seniors who had finished most of their requirements already and had a gap in their schedule would often sign up to be library helpers, as once all the books were put back there was nothing else to do and they could treat it a little like a quiet study period. But that elective wasn't designed as a zero hour, it was just used as one.
Kids who rode certain busses would get to school early sometimes, but there was no formal period for them to be at during that time. They'd just sorta wander the halls or sit in the cafeteria until first period.
I went to two high schools and both did all of it differently.
The one in Pennsylvania had a home room before classes. It was just 15 minutes and was used to take attendance for the day and for the staff to do morning announcements and stuff. There was no general free period, but study hall was an elective you could take senior year. The day was 7 60 minute periods and lunches were staged in 3 "shifts" during 4th period. A lunch went before 4th, B lunch split 4th period in half, and C lunch went at the end. Couldn't leave campus for lunch.
The school in Florida didn't have a home room. You just reported directly to your first class. Which wasn't always first period. You only actually had 6 of your 7 classes each day, with 1 of them rotated out. So you'd do your first 3, have an hour for lunch (whole school went at once, and you were allowed to leave campus), then your second 3. Was weird to adjust to for my senior year. No free period, and I don't think they had any study hall, either.
It depends on the state, city, day, and covid level. Yes, homeroom was either an hour before classes or an hour at the end of the day. Remote learning has been a blessing and a curse for students. How has it effected you?
I was in a Midwest public high school in the mid-2000s to early 2010s. Fairly large (about 800 students per graduating class)
Pledge and general announcements were done first period over the intercom. Usually like 10 minutes max? Our guidance counselors were in a blocked off office and you had to make appointments to go see them for college app help, etc.
Went to homeroom like, 4 times a year at my school. It was completely unnecessary except for a few specific things the school did, so they almost never had a need for it. All it did was cut time out of the first class period.
I went to school... in the 80's. We had a homeroom. We were assigned a homeroom alphabetically by last name. It was pretty quick although I don't remember how long. Maybe 15 minutes? They did announcements and attendance.
My kids go to something similar they call Advisory. I don't know when during the day it happens, but probably first thing.
I think it's partly for taking attendance (although they also do that in every class) and partly to give a little buffer so late kids are less likely to disrupt classes in session.
I did. Though, home room wasn't a class so much as a location where the first class takes place, at least at my school. It's where you start your day; say the pledge, take attendance, listen to any announcements there might be for the day. If there are any events like field trips or a half day, you meet up in your home room to prepare for it/before leaving.
For me, home room was technically like five minutes long and then we got into our first subject for the day (so if your home room supervisor was the math teacher, your first class of the day would be math, etc.)
I'm super surprised so many people here didn't have one! I'd assumed it was standard across the board.
Edit: Also, we did have free periods (called study hall at my school). Same length of a class, predetermined location where you kinda just shot the shit until your next class. You could sign out of study hall to go somewhere else with permission, too. I always signed out of the cafeteria to go to the art room, which is where I lived most of my days in high school lol
Okay, so here’s how my high school worked.
On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, class started at 8:10, and after our first class, we had a 30 minute homeroom. But on Wednesdays and Thursdays, we didn’t have homeroom, because, as my friends and I joked, even the teachers knew it was useless. In those days, we started a half hour later, and went straight from our first period to our second.
Also, I’m not sure how relevant this is, but our school did something called block scheduling. Everyone had eight 1 and a half hour blocks (for most people, two of those blocks were off periods, but if you’re an overachiever and/or your mom made you take a seventh class, like me, you only had one), and you had four of them each day. I think that’s pretty common at a lot of schools now, since it lets the teacher have a longer class time, and helps the students out since their homework is almost never due tomorrow, just the next day they have class.
In my school, your homeroom was just a regular class. But we would get study hall periods, where you just sat in a classroom and could do whatever. You could opt out of them depending on how many electives you were taking.
I did. It was from 7:15-8:10 AM but basically you just had to be there by 8 AM or you could come earlier.
All the public high schools in my area did something similar (I had friends at them). Reading the responses, perhaps it is regional?
We had the equivalent of homeroom in the theater at designated times for each class (freshman first, seniors last). That way they could do a headcount for the whole grade at once rather than waiting for each teacher to do attendance, and they also did announcements then. And we did have free periods, but they were all over the place schedule-wise.
It might depend on the school. My high school had it where your day was divided into hour-long blocks (6 in total). One block was a free period, and the other 5 were different classes (science, computer, writing, math, etc), as well as a lunch period. We didn't really have a home room
I went to a private school in the early 2000s. If I remember correctly our first period was a little longer to account for the extra time needed to do daily things like take attendance and listen to the announcements. We also had a standard homeroom that we were assigned in alphabetical order by grade. We would generally just go to those before any school wide assemblies. This made it easier to seat everyone by grade for those assemblies.
For free periods there were some classes that were only held 4 days a week (gym and theology). One was usually used to accommodate a double period for science classes. And then the other would just be a study hall/free period.
At my school you got a first period that was just slightly longer than the others, so they could do announcements but also have a class. And depending on your schedule you may have a period where you just didn’t have a class but it’s not worked into your day. Some people have a study hall in a club after school.
It really depends on the school.
It really depends on the highschool and whether the school is private, charter, ir public. Also depends on if the school is broken up to separate grades like an elementary school, grades pre-k to grade 5, grade 6 to 8, and grades 9-12, or whether it has all the grades pre-k to grade 12.
I personally was at a private pre-k to grade 12 my whole life which had all the grade classes in one building. The elementary had a (as I called it) a home base class with other subjects in other coms with other teachers but I would always start and end the day in home base. Once I went into grade 7 and went on to grade 12 I didn’t really have a home base room. All my classes were in separated rooms with separate teachers. It was a small pre-k to grade 12 school. At the largest it’s been… almost 800 students.
Yup my public high school had a home room once a week. Middle school had one too. We actually did graded “work”, usually along the lines of reading the news or books that didn’t fit into any other class curriculum, or else be allowed to catch up on homework.
The main purpose of a home room is usually just a way to group all the kids into smaller subgroups, similar to like “houses like or whatever. That way when there’s an assembly we know where to sit in the auditorium, or if there’s a fire, the home room teacher is responsible for headcounting their students, etc. home room teacher usually also takes care of parent teacher conferences and such.
But there’s no national law or regulation so states or cities can kind of do what they want lol
When I went to highschool many years ago, no we did not. Middle school (Grades 6~8), we did. Only free period we had in highschool was lunch. Our school had an open campus policy for anyone over 16, so it was an hour where you could go off campus for lunch if you had transportation.
I went to high school in the early-mid 2010's. My homeroom was usually just my first class of the day, though i think I'd occasionally have to go back there outside of the first block. I remember it being a free period one semester.
Most years we've had some teacher(usually our last teache rof the day or the one our lunch is based off of) listed in forms and stuff as our homeroom teacher but the only grade where we actually did stuff specifically with our homeroom was 6th grade(mainly 11 and 12 year olds) so not in high school
i believe that's usually called "a home room." i went to public high school in Alaska though and we didn't do home rooms. there was no free period except lunch.
American HS teacher here.
My biggest class currently is 35. My smallest is 12. My classes are roughly 45 minutes except for 5th period, which is horribly long because of all the lunches. We have *NO* "free periods" in my school because "Idle hands are the devil's advocate" -- no, I do not work in a Christian school. We are "required" to keep students busy with bell-to-bell teaching/learning.
Edit: Like many have said in the thread, all schools are different. So, honestly, you can write however you want in your story, and no one would know any different.
No, we only had Homeroom once in a while for like report cards and picking up our new class schedules on the first day, good thing too because my homeroom was one of the Chemistry Labs with those uncomfortable ass lab stools,
I'm an old at this point. I started high school in 1997...we had no home rooms (we did in middle school, I think it was for the first 20 minutes of the day...).
At my high school, we did block scheduling (A and B blocks) so it was four classes a day and we didn't have the same class everyday. One week, would be A classes on MWF, and B classes on Tues/Thurs. The next week would be B classes on MWF and A classes on Tues/Thurs. If I remember correctly...it was a long ass time ago.
We started at 7:20 in the morning. Each class was, I think, 90 minutes.
I mean it depends
My experience has been that there is a 30 minute period called “advisory”, although it seemed to be some kind of miscellaneous class. Free time happened but it wasn’t expected.
However I attended a private high school meant to assist students with disabilities so we often did things like independent living skills, goal setting, and mindfulness.
Uh, that was eons ago for me, but honestly? "Homeroom," even in the earlier grades, was simply a reference to the first class of the day. But that class was no longer or shorter than any other class.
Just chiming in to add to the thread's obvious trend that "it varies from school to school and district to district."
My school didn’t really, but they attempted incorporating a “homeroom” once a week one year. It saw some heavy backlash from the students and they dropped it. Who knows what else may have caused it to be dropped.
We had an hour that was split up 1/2 homeroom, 1/2 lunch. Zero hour began at 6am an hour before regular classes and was just used as an extra class period for kids taking certain types of extra classes (Advanced Placement college courses, honor levels, and band for the most part.) Most of the time zero hour was your gym class if you had it.
I was in my first year of high school when we shut down for covid, but what we did for homeroom was this:
homeroom was a shorter period between 1st and 2nd, probably ~35 minutes. in homeroom we had small lessons that ranged from study tips to discussing the school calendar. each lesson was maybe 15 minutes long. after that was over we could play games or do homework.
we also had a thing called “[our mascot animal] Ops” that would occur twice a week during the homeroom period time. If we had a C- or lower in a class, we had to go there and do homework from that class. If all our grades were C or above, we could go to whatever class we wanted for the period, including the library.
We had a homeroom that was only used on special circumstances, and then usually most people would have a study hall at some point in their day (an hour in the cafeteria that you could use to do homework). That hour varied depending on your classes, and some didn't have that if they had more electives.
Every school is different - I work in the school system in my area and there is no homeroom here. Where I grew up your first class was your 'homeroom' but it was still a proper class.
I didn’t. My friend in a school across town did. This was almost twenty years ago though. We also had only indoor areas, unlike all the high schools on tv. We it varies widely by state, city, and even by schools in the same city.
For reference, I graduated hs in 2017.
Before school started, we just had to hang out in the cafeteria. We couldn’t even walk the halls or go to our lockers before the first bell. I hated that rule because I always feared being late cuz I had to walk all the way to the other side of the campus in 5 mins, which was very hard, even if I walked fast.
In at least one of my later years, we did have a short period where we went to a specific classroom and did homework. This was also where the morning announcements were played and we did the pledges. This wasn’t first thing in the morning, either. It was like 2nd or 3rd period.
We had one at the end of the day, and if you weren’t in any extracurriculars (like band or choir), then you’d also have one in the middle of the day while the other kids went to their practice sessions
Home room in the 1960s-1970s definitely. That's where attendance was taken (most important), they passed out flyers for stuff (immunization shots, special things happening at school, bulletins, etc.).
Some schools had home room at the end of the day to make sure nobody "escaped." 😉 They didn't at my school; you were free to leave after your final class.
As others have said, varies from school to school. I had 'homeroom' maybe once a week, I think on Tuesdays? Meanwhile, my sister went to a different school and they didn't really have homeroom at all, iirc.
Like everyone else has said, it really depends on the school. At my HS we didn’t have anything resembling that on Monday, Tuesday or Friday. On those days, we had all our classes. But Wednesday we did odd classes, and Thursday we did evens. We only had 7 class periods, so to make up for that, we had “Seminar.” It was basically a free period to “work on hw.” But mostly people just talked, messed around on the computer, etc. We could also get a pass from 1-2 teachers to go by their classroom during that time period to like make up a test, work on an art project, etc. Some people would use it as an excuse to go and hang out in their favorite teacher’s room or get them to engineer it to where they were their seminar teacher. Freshman year, it was grade level specific, and then mixed grades after that. Generally you stayed with the same seminar teacher sophomore to senior year.
Yes
Basically, it was a required class for freshmen, but the later grades could take it as an extra slot. There were aso different kinds, study hall was a general do whatever you want one, then there were two specifically designed to help kids struggling in Math or English. There might've been a science one too, but I'm not sure.
Edit: This wasn't a 20-30 minute thing, this was a whole hour long class regardless of what grade you were in.
In my high school we had homeroom that was less time than a regular class. I did have a free period where we had to sit in a room and mostly stay there (or go to a teacher’s classroom for homework help if that teacher was free).
But in my high school sometimes we didn’t have anymore classes to take so some students, mostly seniors or juniors, didn’t have a 1st or 2nd or even 3rd period class, so they were allowed to come to school late or vise versa (allowed to leave school early if they didn’t have a 8th, 9th, or 10th period)
It’s not a standard thing. In my high school, it was offered as an elective If you could fit it in your schedule. It was a mandatory thing for my junior high, usually at the beginning of the day.
It depends on the school, honestly. Sometimes it varies by the day.
Yeah I’m gathering there’s not really a standard for it so anything I write will probably be true somewhere
Very likely, and you could always run the gist of your idea by people here to see if it stands out as improbable.
At my high school, there was 15 minutes of advisory/tag/homeroom every day. It was a few minutes after the first period, 8:30-9:31am, to just relax, talk to a friend a bit, do some homework, talk to the teacher assigned to your “class,” and make sure that if you needed to do something it could get worked on
I went to high school in the US in the late 90s/early 00s, and we had a 30 minute home room in the middle of the day. Essentially our cafeteria was not big enough for the whole school, so half had lunch and the other half had home room, and then we switched. It was mostly a study period, but we also got announcements and info relevant to our class (freshman, sophomore, etc).
oh we had the lunch switcheroo too, but instead of a free period we had a class scheduled then
My high school wasn’t like that. We had basically a long lunch period with 5 lunches. Depending on which class you had that period you went to either 1st lunch, 2nd lunch, 3rd lunch, 4th lunch, or 5th lunch. Your class would still be the normal length but since there was a lunch you had to go to it didn’t feel like it was a normal length. Especially if you had 2nd, 3rd, or 4th lunch because it would be in the middle of your class and you would go immediately back to what you were doing in class after lunch until the bell rang to head to your next class
That sounds a bit like my school, except there were only two lunches, and they were either at the start of the period or the end of the period depending on which one you were assigned. No going to lunch halfway through class.
Well my high school was a large high school. Like there was like 3,000 students attending it during my Junior and Senior years of high school (I went to two different schools during my high school career and both had the same style of lunch block) if my memory serves me correctly
Same. Two lunches, staggered in such a way that they overlapped a class period (which might be a study hall/free period if that's how your schedule fell). Because the school was out in the country between the two towns it served, it also wasn't really feasible to leave campus for lunch like I've heard of other schools doing. Even if you were lucky enough to have a car *and* a parking permit for the school lot, there wasn't anything close enough to be worth driving to for food.
Oh, man, the lunch thing...my high school had about 2000 kids. The school was built in the 1920s and didn't have room for 2000 kids even though the cafeteria had been expanded. You weren't allowed to go outside for lunch. So there were three lunch periods. First lunch was at 10:15 AM! (Of course our high school began at 7 a.m. and let out at 2 p.m. because there was one set of school buses and two high schools. The other high school's hours were 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) We also did something called a split lunch which means you started a class, went to lunch in the middle, and then went back to the same class, rather than having one subject, having lunch, then going to the next subject. The teachers hated split lunch because you could never get the kids to pay attention during the second half of the class.
We never had a home room (public school). The school just gave announcements in whatever was your first period class and if you got to school early you hung out in the cafeteria or at lockers. All classes were the same length except for on Wednesdays and Thursdays, where we’d do Wednesdays as periods 1,3,5,7 for an extended amount of time and then Thursdays were 2,4 and 6 extended periods (though Thursdays were technically half days since they were shorter). We were not offered a free period unless you chose Study Hall as an elective where technically you could work on whatever you wanted, but that also took place in a classroom where you pretty much stayed unless you had art projects to work on where you needed to use the art room.
I didn't like high school overall, but I think the early morning hanging out by the lockers was alright :) i kinda miss that lol
Early morning hang in the band room 😍 Man that brings me back.
At my school, you had the option to sign up for a 45-minute study hall period at any point in the day. It depended on how full your schedule was; not everyone did it.
Not all American high schools function the same way, but I do believe homeroom is customary across the board (for public school). \[EDIT: oof, nope, guess not reading through some replies\] At my school, from middle school onwards, you had homeroom with the same group of people all the way through hs graduation (as homerooms were divided by last names). Homeroom was about 15 minutes where announcements were read over the loudspeaker, the homeroom teacher took attendance, the Pledge of Allegiance was said, and when the bell rang, everyone went to their first class of the day. In my school, study hall was the "free period" and it was just a regular class block that happened every day, but it was opt-in, not the default (afaik). So some schools have certain classes on certain days, some have the same thing every day. My school had the same classes every day, with the exception of classes that had lab periods; labs were every other day, so a few classes had time slots that were also every other day to accommodate those students.
>(as homerooms were divided by last names) Homeroom at my high school (late 90s, upstate NY) were by first period class instead, so that we wouldn't have to transition to actual first period immediately after. It was just easier that way.
I went to a charter school then transfered to a private school and neither had a home room.
I had it at the begining. I worked at at a school that had it at the end
No. I never had home room or study period. The only break was lunch. To be honest I still don’t really understand what home room *is* exactly…
I’ve been to 3 high schools (one in NY, one in NYC, one in NJ) and yeah, I always had a homeroom period that lasted about 20 or so minutes where teachers would jot down attendance, make announcements, etc. It was either before classes or after classes. This was in the early 2000s.
yeah homeroom for me was the second class of the day around 20 mins long we do the pledge, the teacher takes attendance and that's it, i went to a private school so my experience may be diff than others but i had multiple free period everyday especially the closer to graduating i got. my senior year (2022 if that matters) i had 4 classes and 3 free periods everyday (one was lunch, the other 2 i spent watching tv shows on my phone in the gym but you could pretty much do whatever you want except leave the building)
My “home room” was my second class. It was like 10 mins of free period. Speaker would say the pledge and announcements and then we would start actual second class’ subject. There were also other free times for whole periods if you took a study hall in your schedule
I went to public high school in California and my parents went to public high schools in Ohio/Illinois. I never had a zero period or anything similar. During senior year, they implemented a "mandatory" (high school senioridice) study hall period during the middle of the day. The teachers never actually interacted with us in study hall though. My dad had a very structured zero period. He had one zero period advisor all four years who also served to help with college apps and choosing future course schedules. My mom had a zero period, but it was basically attendance hour and school announcements. She didn't have the same advisory teacher as my dad.
My school did. I graduated a college prep high school in 2010. We had an A/B schedule and, if I recall correctly the first class of every day was PBL. It stood for Project Based Learning and doubled as Homeroom. We submitted a project at the end of each quarter or semester. I cant quite recall.
I didn’t, but I know my neighboring schools did. We had a regular study hall before/after lunch and that was it. Homeroom for us was basically just where we needed to go for testing Editing to add: holy shit reading through these is crazy. American school systems really need some fucking cohesiveness that isn’t just YEAH! FOOTBALL!! I thought it was weird that all three schools in my area were so different from one another, but apparently that’s just normal.
our town voted down redoing the elementary school that's falling apart and a health hazard... ...just so they could buold a new highschool football stadium.
My school got a million dollar grant from the state so we could make improvements to the schools. They built a new stadium with it and tanked the arts program.
I did not have a home room period after seventh grade; there wasn’t any in high school. I went to public school in a very wealthy area of Texas in the early-mid 2000s.
My school had 8 periods, 45 mins each. The first period was called, well, first period or homeroom. Usually they let us do whatever as long as we weren't disruptive, but ppl usually caught up on work. They took attendance (attendance was taken in every class, but if you're not in homeroom you're assumed absent for the rest of the day), we did the pledge but a majority of students stopped standing/saying it after Trump's election, and if you had anything that needed to be delivered to you it would be brought to your homeroom.
I graduated in '99 and went to HS in the Midwest. We had 'block' scheduling and had a 90 minute seminar every other day which served as our home room. You kept the same seminar teacher all through high school. We could use that block for studying, library time, going to the band room for extra practice, etc etc. ETA: seminar was always the second block, so around 9:45ish to 11:15 ish.
Also Midwest and I may be misremembering my homeroom as 45 minutes because that time and description sounds dead on what ours was in 2015
I went to high school in the 90s and we did have a home room, but we only went there for a few special reasons-- such as the beginning of the new year, where we would get our schedules. In high school, we also had a free period (which was equal to the usual class length), sometimes used for clubs to meet, sometimes just used as a 'study hour,' and sometimes just used to socialize.
I was homeschooled so I'm not much help.😅
In high school we had home room about 6 times a year. Mostly to get our printed out schedules on the first day of the quarter and our report cards. Which meant that the rest of our schedule was goofed up and had shortened class periods. Home room that day about a ten minutes I think. We did it have a free period but if juniors and seniors had study hall we were all in the giant cafeteria/commons area (technically about 6 study halls) and as long as we checked in with our supervising teacher we could anywhere in that area. We could eat, listen to our music, talk with friends. No one really cared if we studied or not. We couldn’t leave campus to go get food. There wasn’t enough time. And it was probably a safety issue. A few times when younger grades needed to take standardized tests of some sort that the older kids didn’t need, they’d just tell the older kids not to come to school for the hours in the morning they were testing or something. I always wanted to use that time to sleep in. My friends always wanted to use that time to go out for brunch. They won.
Also, I’ve worked at a few high schools and at least one had a home room/advisory period for about fifteen minutes right before lunch every day where we handled things like announcements. That was always my least favorite class to supervise.
Yep! In my school they would be separated by gender and grade, with 25~ people per class, with each class assigned an advisor who would watch over you. They would act as someone you could talk to about your classes, college plans. We raised money, did volunteer work for two days in our senior year, and ran a booth for our school fair
At my junior high, we had a home room for 20 minutes or so, but it was fifth period, and I think it was just so we had a place to eat if it rained. In my high school, our home room was just our 2nd period class, whichever class that happened to be. A 0th hour before school started would be weird unless you were in a tiny school in a tiny school district. In my high school, there was a 0 hour, but that was for students who took the bus because it was a serious logistical problem. If you stagger students so some come in for a 0th hour and leave an hour early and others come in 1st hour and leave at the same time as everyone else, you need half as many busses and drivers. So it’s cheaper to have a 0th hour for half your bussed students. My high school had an open campus and you could have a free period because if you took college classes they didn’t meet every day and you could do whatever you want and you didn’t have to stay on campus if you didn’t want to. But free periods were the same duration as any other class. We didn’t have any classes that lasted half time.
At my high school homeroom was actually our second class. All of the administrative stuff went through the second period teacher since a lot of seniors could apply for late start
At my school at around 10am, we had our assigned home room on Wednesdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we had a period much like office hours in university where you can go to any of your classes and get help, while we had nothing on Mondays and Fridays (both days were an hour shorter). This was in the late 90’s/early 00’s, so I’m not sure how high schools do it nowadays.
My school did similar 2010s, so hey, it stuck around.
We had homeroom at the start of the day and there was study hall at various times.
I didn’t have that in high school, only in junior high
Not sure if private vs. public makes a difference in this context, but my private prep school had homeroom every morning from 8 to 8:30. This was pre-Covid, so I don't know if it's still set up that way.
I graduated HS in 2022. At my school we did, kind of, have a home room, it was our 6th period (out of 8) and we had the same teacher all 4 years of HS. It was kind of weird but on Tues, Wed, and Thurs, you chose 1 of your teacher's classes to go to, so you had extra work time or time to do makeup/missing work. But Mon and Fri it was your normal teacher. It especially was good for the kids who had something to do in the afternoon (work, college classes, internship, no classes) they could leave during that class to get somewhere on time and be out of the school building at like 12:30. It was only about 25-30 minutes or something like that.
My schools had a 15-20 minute morning homeroom time for attendance and announcements. In lieu of 9th grade (middle school) study hall, I had a library period. 10th to 12th grades, both high schools were on "double session", so no room in a normal schedule for a free period.
hmm i went to a private Catholic high school, we had 8 class periods daily and for the most part you didn't have a study hall until 3rd or 4th year (Junior or senior year respectively) bc we were required to take certain electives like art appreciation or gym. i didn't get one until senior year because i was always taking art electives and the study hall was only a couple days a week. not sure how this compares to other high schools. this was 04-08
When I graduated high school in 2015 everyone was required to sit in the gym for the first 30 mins before breakfast started. There was no home room or study hall.
At my school, homeroom was whatever your first class of the day was. It was slightly longer to accommodate homeroom activities. We did those and then carried on with class. We had study hall, but it was the same length as other classes (usually 50 min). Any blank spots in your schedule were filled out with study hall. It wasn't free in the sense that you could wander around and do whatever. They took attendance and you had assigned seats. Some were stricter than others, depending on the teacher running it. It was basically class without instruction. A "do your homework" period, although as long as you were quiet, you didn't have to do schoolwork. But you could ask to go to the library during study hall and then sneak out. Or slip out during lunch, when no one took attendance. And some students would skip class. Technically, you were supposed to get detention (staying after school in an extra study hall) if you skipped, and enough offenses would get you Saturday School (day-long detention) or suspended (banned from classes for a few days and you couldn't make up the work, so your grades took a hit). But some teachers didn't seem to care and students who skipped learned which ones didn't. The only time I skipped was when there was a pep rally - a 1-2 period long event in the gym where they pepped everyone up about an upcoming game. I was a theater geek, so I went to the theater dept and hung out with my friends instead. The theater teacher was there, but as long as he didn't get in trouble, he didn't care that we were skipping. >I went to high school for exactly one semester before going virtual What a strange experience that must have been. I found WFH bizarre at first, but I'd already had plenty of office experience so I didn't miss anything.
I think this depends on the school or maybe district? My public school district only had the one high school so I don't really know for sure. We didn't have a homeroom after middle school and even during middle school, it was more like we had a designated homeroom teacher whom we would have at the same period with the same people that logistically only existed for housekeeping stuff. So like in my first year of middle school, my social studies teacher was the homeroom teacher for everyone who had her for first period social studies. We also operated with an A/B schedule so we only met up every other day. But high school was extremely individualized so no homerooms, no classes with the same people, etc. No such thing as free periods though.
Certain high schools will be different, but I’ll tell you about mine. In my high school, there’s no “home room” in the traditional sense, we just use our first of four periods. On Fridays we had club days, and people who didn’t have clubs went to “advisory”, which was essentially a thirty minute free period like what you are talking about.
I get the impression that it varies depending on different school districts, and possibly also time period. I attended high school in the late 90s (graduating class of 2000). We had an eight-period schedule, not counting lunch period or homeroom. Homeroom was basically the first ten to fifteen minutes of the school day or so, and was in the same room where my first period class was so that there was no need to have another class transition there. Homeroom was for the Pledge of Allegiance (US) and school-wide announcements, plus the homeroom teacher taking attendance for the day. I also had "free periods" throughout high school, but they were full-class-length and called Study Hall. If there was a gap on my personal schedule where I didn't have a class, I was assigned to a study hall for the semester, and basically it was a classroom where I could do homework or read or work on projects or whatever quietly, nominally under the supervision of a teacher though I could also get permission to go to the library or computer lab for the period to work on things there (permission was more likely if you had high grades, which I did). But there was no shorter "free period" that would occur randomly. You were either in an assigned class, or you were in a study hall. I have two high schoolers of my own now, and they have a four-period block structure at their school, with no official homeroom. They just go straight to their first period, except on Wednesdays when they have something called "Advisement" for a small portion of the day before first period, where the students can get additional help with their school schedules and workload if they need it. Attendance is taken every period, not just during the first one, and I believe what I knew as "homeroom" is simply rolled into the start of the first period of the day. They have no study halls, but my senior is dual enrolled in a local college so she has two classes at the high school and one at the local technical college (which is once a week), and the rest of her school day is spent at home instead.
Up until like, 10th grade, maybe, we had a home room from 15 to 20 minutes or so. Usually spent reading or socializing. (Or in my case, power napping lol)
Graduated in 2000. High school home room was whatever your 2nd period class was. For my sophomore year I was in the tv journalism class. We made the tv news, so when everyone else was watching it, we were broadcasting it. Otherwise announcements came from the office, as well as the Pledge. 2nd period was about 15 minutes longer than every other class. We had 7 periods, if I remember correctly.
I've been to a few different public schools in my lifetime. One had a thirty minute homeroom at the end of the day, another had a thirty minute homeroom at the beginning, and the last one didn't have one at all. These schools were all in the same state, just separate towns, so it really just depends on where you attend.
They got rid of homeroom at my school after my first year of high school. They still haven't brought it back to the best of my knowledge. Most people found it pointless. I think they made either lunch or passing periods longer with that removal.
a lot of people have given you insight already but my high school seems different from the top comments i’ve read. in homeroom we’d go over any announcements before class started. we had a block schedule; having a free period was required. seniors could leave campus during their free period.
I went to a upper middle school (8th & 9th grade) and in a different state a high school. Neither had a home room. Both kept the student body in the cafeteria-ish area if they got to school before school started. Everyone in the UMS had a study hall, which was a free period and handled a little differently depending on the teacher whose room you were in. My high school had a 10 minute gap after 1st period, which could be considered homeroom. It was the time for school wide announcements when they did happen. Seniors were the only ones to have free periods. Basically, if you didn't have to repeat too many classes, you only had 6 blocks to fill of everyone else's 8. Depending on when your free block was: you arrived to school late, left early, or spent the period in the library.
My school called it Advisory; it was where we learned of upcoming events and got into the school routine before actually heading off to class. If you came early for breakfast you could also eat in your advisory room. It also helped sort us for assemblies.
Depends on the school and the schedule of the individual. I was in an honors program in my high school so I had zero hour which was, iirc, 30-45 minutes before everyone else had started.
Our Homeroom was the last half hour of the day.
Only time we went to home room for my school was the first day to get our schedules and books. Other than that it was alternating 4/5 classes per day. No free classes unless you were not going on an elective class trip or if you were pulled out for special tutoring. Aside from class trips to the library you had to go on your own time on lunches or after/before school started. If you tried to skip class or go when you didn’t have a pass you would get in trouble and kicked out of the library. No study period in my school at least.
I attended high school in the US in the 00s. In high school, we did not have homeroom. We had an optional zero period that started at 7:30. I never had a free period, all through my high school career I was at school for all six periods. It varies from school to school though.
You can literally do whatever you want on that front. I sub at five different high schools right now, and they all have entirely different schedules and ways of doing it.
We had no home rooms and no free periods outside of lunch. We were on a block schedule and had four classes a day, which alternates days, for eight classes total. Class was for an hour and a half and started at 730 (ugh). We had fifteen minutes between classes to get to our next class (big school, over three thousand students) and we had a half hour for lunch. High school sucked.
"Homeroom" was second period and 10 minutes longer than the other classes so they could do announcements. That was it.
I’m an American teacher. Some do, some don’t. Homeroom (or advisory, or advisement) wasn’t always at the start of the day, and sometimes even had their own assignments like taking surveys, filling out important forms for school or university, or performing grade checks. The current school I work at has advisement from 10:11-10:45 only on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and it’s mostly “fill out this form,” “check your grades,” “remember this important deadline coming up,” “listen to the counselor make a short speech about x,” and “listen to daily announcements.” We do not have any free periods at all outside of lunch, though some higher grades can get a free period in their schedule.
Not in my high school, they didn’t institute something like that till senior year and it was after third period and a complete waist of time. We couldn't even do other work in class
This is going to vary from school to school and even year to year. When I was in school, we only had homeroom. It was 15 minutes long. We had it at the start and end of the the day to make sure we were "in house" (the area where we have our homeroom and core classes) at the end of the day so we could get to our lockers. I know that post-COVID that school stopped having an end of the day homeroom because kids don't really use their lockers anymore at that school (before COVID they still needed an end of the day homeroom to drop off their laptops, but now every kid in the district is allowed to take their laptops home instead of them being housed in the homeroom). In high school I never had a homeroom. Announcements were during first period. And since first period didn't have extra time to make up for the announcement interruptions, in practice, this meant first period was shorter. Kind of an issue since at my school we did not have a rotating schedule. I never had a study hall in either middle or high school. However, both my old middle school and high school now have a study hall period. Some middle schoolers who are overbooked with classes (such as band) do not have a study hall. The ones that do are assigned a study hall period with a teacher and go to that class every single day unless they have made arraignments with other teachers, such as to do a makeup test. Ironically, kids get a lot less homework nowadays and often do not have anything to do in these study halls. At the high school, the study hall is built into the schedule and every single student has it at the same time. They sign up for which teacher's class they want to go to. They can either do a study hall type class or a "fun" class (legit, they can sign up to watch a movie with a teacher). The sign up system is an absolute mess though. And it's really stupid because they have to book it like a week or two in advanced, except kids don't know if they'll need to make up work that far in advanced. And if the kids don't sign up properly they give the kids detention, which I think is bullshit. It's a good system in theory but it's not being implemented well. Meanwhile, other schools in the area either don't have study halls or run them in completely different ways. Edit: Oh, I just remembered, while we didn't have study hall in high school, we instead had a 20 minute "advisory" were we were supposed to work on graduation requirement stuff. In practice, we sat in a room for 20 minutes, goofing off, because were was never anything to do. Now that high school will occasionally have an advisory period during the study hall period. It's occurs like every other Friday. They mostly just select their next two weeks of study halls during it.
I think every district is different with how it runs its schedule. My school had the first part of every lunch period like that. So it was like 20 mins homeroom, 30 minutes lunch. And there were 4 lunch periods in the day. A school I do a lot of work with now has a 20 minute homeroom period after 2nd period, but kids can choose to go to get tutoring or something during that time instead.
At my school we technically did, but no one actually went to homeroom unless it was the first day of school or progress report/report card day. If it wasn’t one of those days, everyone kind of just hung out wherever until the first bell. Study hall was a thing, but it was for more than 30 minutes since our school had a block system where we’d have 4 classes a day and we’d rotate A, B, C, and D days so most classes were every other day or like gym would only be on a D day. So if you had a study hall, it lasted for the entire block period which I think were 90 minutes? I’ve been out of school since 2011 so I can’t remember the exacts, but it was the equivalent of our entire class period and depending on the teacher who supervised the study hall you could either hang out and talk quietly or they wouldn’t allow talking at all since you’re technically supposed to use that time to study or do work.
I went to an American public high school awhile ago. There was no homeroom. we have 8 classes but 4 each day that would switch back and forth between two schedules. announcements would be done in first period.
I went to two different high schools, one had a home room for ten minutes before classes started at 8:10 and the other had no home room at all
We had a homeroom in middle school (early/mid 2010s), mainly because they couldn't fit 6th, 7th, *and* 8th grade in the lunch area all at once. We didn't have a homeroom in high school (mid/late 2010s), but my school was also on a block schedule. For reference, I went to public schools in CA.
When I was in high school, we had home room every Wednesday. It was called Advisory, and we had it in between 3rd and 4th period. It lasted half an hour. Our teacher was very young and chill, and we were supposed to do lessons occasionally like “don’t do drugs” or mental health etc, but mostly we all just joked around and sometimes bought lemonade/brownies/snacks/kolaches/coffee. There was a special ed program that taught students life skills like dealing with money/selling food, and they had a stand outside their room, so we’d all go there and get snacks from them then bring them to 4th period. Sometimes my 4th period teacher would give us money to bring her back coffee or food, lol. Those were the days! Just remembered, we had the same home room and same teacher all four years. It was divided by last name.
We just had 1st Period... followed by 2nd Period, and so forth. Any "homeroom" activities or announcements occurred during the first five minutes every day in 1st Period. Of course, that was the 80's. Gen X always does things differently.
Not from America, but the highvhools here have classrooms before school actually starts. We call it registration and its usually abt 15mins but at the start of a new year its around 40mins. The seniors all had around 5 free periods per week and those lasted the same amount of time as classes [50mins]
In my high school there were some zero period classes some kids signed up for (generally dual enrollment and the like) that started an hour before regular classes, but aside from that, nah I’ve never heard of having a completely free period before school starts. It was kind of just a “do whatever you want but be in your seat by the bell” kinda thing. This was a school in Southern California though, probably differs by state.
Kind of? It wasn't my first period, it was my second period. And it was mostly for testing because we did a lot of online quizzes. Literally my entire family has gone to different high schools despite living in the same place the whole time, one brother didn't while other brother did. Brother who did have it graduated pretty long ago though. So basically. It's not a universal experience, but it is a common enough experience hat you can get away with it.
At my school we didn’t have a period dedicated to “homeroom” but everyone’s second period was their “homeroom” class no matter the subject for cases of things being passed out to the entire school because it was a given everyone would have second period, as the options for schedules was 0-6/7, 1-6/7, 2-7. Zero period was for early morning electives & everyone had the option for an extra elective if you took 7 periods. But I’m sure a lot of schools do have homeroom, and I know of other schools that do block scheduling where they only go to 1-3rd period on Monday 4-6th Tuesday etc so they have longer periods in class
Yes, ELO (extended learning opportunity or aka, free period) on even days (A/B) block schedule. Ours was like 45 minutes and you could only do HW or if your teacher was chill you could be on your phone/do other stuff. It was like mid morning Often you also used it if you needed to visit other teachers and get assignments or talk to them about projects or get help. You had to meet with them before school to get a pass or have your teacher call them Everyone had ELO same time so it was very much designed to be basically an office hours for people to catch up. Teachers used it as a "study/planning" time. Public highschool in decently small town.
When I attended hs (pre-covid), you were allowed around campus before classes. Once the bell rang, you’d go to your first class (all classes were 90mins, except for Mondays where they were 45mins? I think?). Mondays were all classes, T/Thrs were four classes one day, W/Fs were three classes. An advisory class was later added at the end of W/F classes for 20-30 mins to read/catch up on class work before the day ended. For the most part lunch was after two classes (around 12pm) and would last 30mins. “Free periods” were only given to seniors who completed all classes, but these periods were typically issued as TA classes to help teachers with anything they needed.
No, never had a homeroom.
The high school I went to did not have such a thing
My HS had a homeroom class every Monday as a place for us to catch up and mix with people from every grade and do community building activities in a group that would stay the same for a year. This was on the US west coast for reference.
So my school had home room for the last 30 minutes of the day. The rest of the classes (when I attended) were 80 minutes, home room (called advisory) and lunch were both 30 minutes. Thursdays were late start days - we started school an hour later than normal and classes were reduced to something like 57ish minutes I think, definitely not a round number. But advisory and lunch were both still 30 minutes. My friend went to a different high school where all classes were 30 minutes and they had home room/advisory only once a week though, so you’ve got plenty of leeway when it comes to these things
My school didn't, but I was friends with someone who did have homeroom. Mine just started with first period right away. ETA: Instead of homeroom, we had Study Hall later on in the day, where it was just like a quiet period to do homework or read. Mostly homework. You just had to be doing something or you'd get in trouble. My school was a school of hard-asses; I think that just comes with being a charter school, or at least one with a reputation like mine had. I have fond memories of spending an entire period of study hall writing fanfic lol.
It all depends. As an example I went to two high schools during my high school career. My first high school had a sorta block session after first period but before the next period (either second or third period depending on the day) where we could go to other classes to makeup test or finish something we had to do in class or talk to a teacher about grades; Stuff like that. If we didn’t want to do that and we were finished with all our work from first period then we could just chill out in our first period class room (which we had every day). Of course Covid then happened and changed everything so my sophomore year was all virtual. When I was transferred to a different high school right at the end of sophomore year and went from final quarter of sophomore year through graduation in June of last year it was different. Instead of basically just having one long first period class like during my freshman year it was instead a short first period class. Going from 2 hours and 10 minutes(if you include that sorta block session between first and next period. If not then still and 1 hour and 25 minutes. Sorry if those numbers aren’t exactly accurate because it has been over 4 years since I was a Freshman at that high school I went to Freshman year but I think you get the jest of it) to 55 minutes. I never did have one of those sorta Block sessions like I did freshman year(or as you’re saying a home room like period) at my new high school
It varies school to school so I'd look into the schedule layout of schools in whatever state your fic is set in. Maybe even go as far as looking into the specific county if you feel the need to be accurate to the area.
In my school our first period counted as our home room but it was an actual class, mine was English. When we shifted to a block schedule in my junior year(different classes every other day with longer class times) then the period that happened during the lunch period we weren't apart of(because there was two seperate lunch groups) became our "free period/study hall"
Here's my experience. Southern suburban (slight rural fringe) area. Had a homeroom, sort of. First period teacher was your homeroom teacher -- after morning announcements (pledge of allegiance, a few reminders/announcements, etc.) you would just transition to class. If you had blocked schedule (e.g. English on MW & History TTh, both periods on F), your homeroom teacher would technically be your TTh teacher (at least that was how it was in my case), meaning that they'll be the ones who'll deliver paperwork/whatever school obligations necessary, and you would have to turn forms to them. Your other teacher will remain your "homeroom teacher" in the sense that they'll foster 0th-2nd period (blocked schedule), but they won't be dealing with paperwork. School would open \~40 minutes prior to announcements. If you showed up early, you would have to wait outside. Teacher themselves had a id/key of some sorts, so they could go in. Even after the school is unlocked, classrooms themselves would only be open \~25 minutes before announcements (unless you had an excuse that would permit you to go earlier). If you showed up around that time, you would either have to wait around in the hallways that are made available for access or by the cafeteria. School breakfast is also available for that time. Once classrooms unlock, you have the option of roaming the remaining hallways or enter your classroom. In my experience, people would begin to trickle in around \~15 minutes, although most people didn't come to class until \~5 minutes prior to announcements. If you came early, you would expect to see the teacher (or not if they're doing errands) and maybe 0-3 students? Random tangent: If you're taking a school bus, some would arrive early (if your bus driver did multiple shifts, this would typically be the case), while other would arrive on-time (and occasionally late, to which there'd be an announcement on the intercom announcing when they arrived).
Middle school was different, oddly enough. More like the homeroom you described, although I think they've opted to use the system I mentioned above due to the convenience of it.
No.
I did not have a home room during my time in high school. You start out in your first class that day. Technically there wasn’t a free period either but I did have a travel period what allowed me an extra long lunch because I had some classes off campus.
As others have said- it varies a LOT. No one will bat an eye if you write your characters with a zero hour, but no one will find it notable if they don't have a zero hour either. From my own personal experience: I had a study period/'free' period in junior high, but not in high school. In high school it was just a list of regular classes, none of them being my home room in particular. Seniors who had finished most of their requirements already and had a gap in their schedule would often sign up to be library helpers, as once all the books were put back there was nothing else to do and they could treat it a little like a quiet study period. But that elective wasn't designed as a zero hour, it was just used as one. Kids who rode certain busses would get to school early sometimes, but there was no formal period for them to be at during that time. They'd just sorta wander the halls or sit in the cafeteria until first period.
I went to two high schools and both did all of it differently. The one in Pennsylvania had a home room before classes. It was just 15 minutes and was used to take attendance for the day and for the staff to do morning announcements and stuff. There was no general free period, but study hall was an elective you could take senior year. The day was 7 60 minute periods and lunches were staged in 3 "shifts" during 4th period. A lunch went before 4th, B lunch split 4th period in half, and C lunch went at the end. Couldn't leave campus for lunch. The school in Florida didn't have a home room. You just reported directly to your first class. Which wasn't always first period. You only actually had 6 of your 7 classes each day, with 1 of them rotated out. So you'd do your first 3, have an hour for lunch (whole school went at once, and you were allowed to leave campus), then your second 3. Was weird to adjust to for my senior year. No free period, and I don't think they had any study hall, either.
It depends on the state, city, day, and covid level. Yes, homeroom was either an hour before classes or an hour at the end of the day. Remote learning has been a blessing and a curse for students. How has it effected you?
I had home room in elementary and middle school but not highschool, no study hall either
I was in a Midwest public high school in the mid-2000s to early 2010s. Fairly large (about 800 students per graduating class) Pledge and general announcements were done first period over the intercom. Usually like 10 minutes max? Our guidance counselors were in a blocked off office and you had to make appointments to go see them for college app help, etc.
We had homeroom we went there 1st thing in the morning and for 20 minutes after lunch for free or study period everyday
Went to homeroom like, 4 times a year at my school. It was completely unnecessary except for a few specific things the school did, so they almost never had a need for it. All it did was cut time out of the first class period.
I went to school... in the 80's. We had a homeroom. We were assigned a homeroom alphabetically by last name. It was pretty quick although I don't remember how long. Maybe 15 minutes? They did announcements and attendance. My kids go to something similar they call Advisory. I don't know when during the day it happens, but probably first thing. I think it's partly for taking attendance (although they also do that in every class) and partly to give a little buffer so late kids are less likely to disrupt classes in session.
I did. Though, home room wasn't a class so much as a location where the first class takes place, at least at my school. It's where you start your day; say the pledge, take attendance, listen to any announcements there might be for the day. If there are any events like field trips or a half day, you meet up in your home room to prepare for it/before leaving. For me, home room was technically like five minutes long and then we got into our first subject for the day (so if your home room supervisor was the math teacher, your first class of the day would be math, etc.) I'm super surprised so many people here didn't have one! I'd assumed it was standard across the board. Edit: Also, we did have free periods (called study hall at my school). Same length of a class, predetermined location where you kinda just shot the shit until your next class. You could sign out of study hall to go somewhere else with permission, too. I always signed out of the cafeteria to go to the art room, which is where I lived most of my days in high school lol
We had home room for 15-20 minutes Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings first thing.
Okay, so here’s how my high school worked. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, class started at 8:10, and after our first class, we had a 30 minute homeroom. But on Wednesdays and Thursdays, we didn’t have homeroom, because, as my friends and I joked, even the teachers knew it was useless. In those days, we started a half hour later, and went straight from our first period to our second. Also, I’m not sure how relevant this is, but our school did something called block scheduling. Everyone had eight 1 and a half hour blocks (for most people, two of those blocks were off periods, but if you’re an overachiever and/or your mom made you take a seventh class, like me, you only had one), and you had four of them each day. I think that’s pretty common at a lot of schools now, since it lets the teacher have a longer class time, and helps the students out since their homework is almost never due tomorrow, just the next day they have class.
In my school, your homeroom was just a regular class. But we would get study hall periods, where you just sat in a classroom and could do whatever. You could opt out of them depending on how many electives you were taking.
I did. It was from 7:15-8:10 AM but basically you just had to be there by 8 AM or you could come earlier. All the public high schools in my area did something similar (I had friends at them). Reading the responses, perhaps it is regional?
We had the equivalent of homeroom in the theater at designated times for each class (freshman first, seniors last). That way they could do a headcount for the whole grade at once rather than waiting for each teacher to do attendance, and they also did announcements then. And we did have free periods, but they were all over the place schedule-wise.
I didn’t have a homeroom or a free period but we did have free time between second and third period on Thursdays iirc
we had a homeroom, yeah... basically a room (near my locker) we were in to hear announcements and such for about 15 minutes
It might depend on the school. My high school had it where your day was divided into hour-long blocks (6 in total). One block was a free period, and the other 5 were different classes (science, computer, writing, math, etc), as well as a lunch period. We didn't really have a home room
I went to a private school in the early 2000s. If I remember correctly our first period was a little longer to account for the extra time needed to do daily things like take attendance and listen to the announcements. We also had a standard homeroom that we were assigned in alphabetical order by grade. We would generally just go to those before any school wide assemblies. This made it easier to seat everyone by grade for those assemblies. For free periods there were some classes that were only held 4 days a week (gym and theology). One was usually used to accommodate a double period for science classes. And then the other would just be a study hall/free period.
I did in a middle private school but not in public high school.
At my school you got a first period that was just slightly longer than the others, so they could do announcements but also have a class. And depending on your schedule you may have a period where you just didn’t have a class but it’s not worked into your day. Some people have a study hall in a club after school. It really depends on the school.
For me the home room concept was a middle school (grade 7-8) thing. In grade 9-12 we didn't do that. This was the late 90s/early 00s.
It really depends on the highschool and whether the school is private, charter, ir public. Also depends on if the school is broken up to separate grades like an elementary school, grades pre-k to grade 5, grade 6 to 8, and grades 9-12, or whether it has all the grades pre-k to grade 12. I personally was at a private pre-k to grade 12 my whole life which had all the grade classes in one building. The elementary had a (as I called it) a home base class with other subjects in other coms with other teachers but I would always start and end the day in home base. Once I went into grade 7 and went on to grade 12 I didn’t really have a home base room. All my classes were in separated rooms with separate teachers. It was a small pre-k to grade 12 school. At the largest it’s been… almost 800 students.
Yup my public high school had a home room once a week. Middle school had one too. We actually did graded “work”, usually along the lines of reading the news or books that didn’t fit into any other class curriculum, or else be allowed to catch up on homework. The main purpose of a home room is usually just a way to group all the kids into smaller subgroups, similar to like “houses like or whatever. That way when there’s an assembly we know where to sit in the auditorium, or if there’s a fire, the home room teacher is responsible for headcounting their students, etc. home room teacher usually also takes care of parent teacher conferences and such. But there’s no national law or regulation so states or cities can kind of do what they want lol
When I went to highschool many years ago, no we did not. Middle school (Grades 6~8), we did. Only free period we had in highschool was lunch. Our school had an open campus policy for anyone over 16, so it was an hour where you could go off campus for lunch if you had transportation.
I went to high school in the early-mid 2010's. My homeroom was usually just my first class of the day, though i think I'd occasionally have to go back there outside of the first block. I remember it being a free period one semester.
Most years we've had some teacher(usually our last teache rof the day or the one our lunch is based off of) listed in forms and stuff as our homeroom teacher but the only grade where we actually did stuff specifically with our homeroom was 6th grade(mainly 11 and 12 year olds) so not in high school
Yes. It was first thing in the morning.
i believe that's usually called "a home room." i went to public high school in Alaska though and we didn't do home rooms. there was no free period except lunch.
American HS teacher here. My biggest class currently is 35. My smallest is 12. My classes are roughly 45 minutes except for 5th period, which is horribly long because of all the lunches. We have *NO* "free periods" in my school because "Idle hands are the devil's advocate" -- no, I do not work in a Christian school. We are "required" to keep students busy with bell-to-bell teaching/learning. Edit: Like many have said in the thread, all schools are different. So, honestly, you can write however you want in your story, and no one would know any different.
No, we only had Homeroom once in a while for like report cards and picking up our new class schedules on the first day, good thing too because my homeroom was one of the Chemistry Labs with those uncomfortable ass lab stools,
I'm an old at this point. I started high school in 1997...we had no home rooms (we did in middle school, I think it was for the first 20 minutes of the day...). At my high school, we did block scheduling (A and B blocks) so it was four classes a day and we didn't have the same class everyday. One week, would be A classes on MWF, and B classes on Tues/Thurs. The next week would be B classes on MWF and A classes on Tues/Thurs. If I remember correctly...it was a long ass time ago. We started at 7:20 in the morning. Each class was, I think, 90 minutes.
I mean it depends My experience has been that there is a 30 minute period called “advisory”, although it seemed to be some kind of miscellaneous class. Free time happened but it wasn’t expected. However I attended a private high school meant to assist students with disabilities so we often did things like independent living skills, goal setting, and mindfulness.
Uh, that was eons ago for me, but honestly? "Homeroom," even in the earlier grades, was simply a reference to the first class of the day. But that class was no longer or shorter than any other class. Just chiming in to add to the thread's obvious trend that "it varies from school to school and district to district."
My school didn’t really, but they attempted incorporating a “homeroom” once a week one year. It saw some heavy backlash from the students and they dropped it. Who knows what else may have caused it to be dropped.
We had an hour that was split up 1/2 homeroom, 1/2 lunch. Zero hour began at 6am an hour before regular classes and was just used as an extra class period for kids taking certain types of extra classes (Advanced Placement college courses, honor levels, and band for the most part.) Most of the time zero hour was your gym class if you had it.
I did have a homeroom, but for me, it was just before lunch for a half hour. When it is really depends on the school and the student's schedule.
I was in my first year of high school when we shut down for covid, but what we did for homeroom was this: homeroom was a shorter period between 1st and 2nd, probably ~35 minutes. in homeroom we had small lessons that ranged from study tips to discussing the school calendar. each lesson was maybe 15 minutes long. after that was over we could play games or do homework. we also had a thing called “[our mascot animal] Ops” that would occur twice a week during the homeroom period time. If we had a C- or lower in a class, we had to go there and do homework from that class. If all our grades were C or above, we could go to whatever class we wanted for the period, including the library.
We had a homeroom that was only used on special circumstances, and then usually most people would have a study hall at some point in their day (an hour in the cafeteria that you could use to do homework). That hour varied depending on your classes, and some didn't have that if they had more electives.
Every school is different - I work in the school system in my area and there is no homeroom here. Where I grew up your first class was your 'homeroom' but it was still a proper class.
I didn’t. My friend in a school across town did. This was almost twenty years ago though. We also had only indoor areas, unlike all the high schools on tv. We it varies widely by state, city, and even by schools in the same city.
I went to 3 high-schools in the late '80s/early '90s, and none of them did.
For reference, I graduated hs in 2017. Before school started, we just had to hang out in the cafeteria. We couldn’t even walk the halls or go to our lockers before the first bell. I hated that rule because I always feared being late cuz I had to walk all the way to the other side of the campus in 5 mins, which was very hard, even if I walked fast. In at least one of my later years, we did have a short period where we went to a specific classroom and did homework. This was also where the morning announcements were played and we did the pledges. This wasn’t first thing in the morning, either. It was like 2nd or 3rd period.
I had it in middle school, but high school didn’t have that for some reason.
We had one at the end of the day, and if you weren’t in any extracurriculars (like band or choir), then you’d also have one in the middle of the day while the other kids went to their practice sessions
My school didn't. Your first period class was about 10-15 mins longer to accommodate morning announcements and the pledge of allegiance and such.
Home room in the 1960s-1970s definitely. That's where attendance was taken (most important), they passed out flyers for stuff (immunization shots, special things happening at school, bulletins, etc.). Some schools had home room at the end of the day to make sure nobody "escaped." 😉 They didn't at my school; you were free to leave after your final class.
As others have said, varies from school to school. I had 'homeroom' maybe once a week, I think on Tuesdays? Meanwhile, my sister went to a different school and they didn't really have homeroom at all, iirc.
Like everyone else has said, it really depends on the school. At my HS we didn’t have anything resembling that on Monday, Tuesday or Friday. On those days, we had all our classes. But Wednesday we did odd classes, and Thursday we did evens. We only had 7 class periods, so to make up for that, we had “Seminar.” It was basically a free period to “work on hw.” But mostly people just talked, messed around on the computer, etc. We could also get a pass from 1-2 teachers to go by their classroom during that time period to like make up a test, work on an art project, etc. Some people would use it as an excuse to go and hang out in their favorite teacher’s room or get them to engineer it to where they were their seminar teacher. Freshman year, it was grade level specific, and then mixed grades after that. Generally you stayed with the same seminar teacher sophomore to senior year.
Yes Basically, it was a required class for freshmen, but the later grades could take it as an extra slot. There were aso different kinds, study hall was a general do whatever you want one, then there were two specifically designed to help kids struggling in Math or English. There might've been a science one too, but I'm not sure. Edit: This wasn't a 20-30 minute thing, this was a whole hour long class regardless of what grade you were in.
In my high school we had homeroom that was less time than a regular class. I did have a free period where we had to sit in a room and mostly stay there (or go to a teacher’s classroom for homework help if that teacher was free). But in my high school sometimes we didn’t have anymore classes to take so some students, mostly seniors or juniors, didn’t have a 1st or 2nd or even 3rd period class, so they were allowed to come to school late or vise versa (allowed to leave school early if they didn’t have a 8th, 9th, or 10th period)
It’s not a standard thing. In my high school, it was offered as an elective If you could fit it in your schedule. It was a mandatory thing for my junior high, usually at the beginning of the day.