Fifth block is a time outside of the mandatory four-block class schedule where students can have the time to participate in school-sponsored extracurricular activities and clubs, take a music class, and still be able to play a sport.

When Haven was conceived as a merger school between Swarthmore High School and Nether-Providence High School, the regular student schedule was built around eight class periods and an extra ninth-period class. Ninth period was an activity period when music classes, clubs, and activities were organized, similar to the current fifth block.

The editorial “Ninth Period Classes Cause Conflicts,” published in 1983 in the first issue of “The Panther Press”, expressed concerns about the class. In music classes where attendance has been mandatory since those early days of Strath Haven, “students in them find it difficult, if not impossible, to participate in activities and clubs.”

The transition from the nine-period schedule to the five-block one we know happened in the mid-to-late 1990s. While the structure of the school day has evolved since the 1980s, the challenge of balancing activities during fifth block remains.

“I have to sacrifice one thing always, which is a bummer, but you can’t have it all,” junior Minori Saito said. “Especially when you’re so active in all of these different things, like in clubs and music, in student government and whatnot. It’s hard to not have any conflicts.”

Fifth block conflicts have contributed to low attendance rates across all activities, including clubs, which have no way of mandating attendance the same way music classes can.

“That’s one of the reasons why clubs always have such a hard time deciding on meeting days, because do you leave the band kids out, or do you leave the orchestra kids out?” Saito said. “And you don’t want to be on a day with a different club. So there’s always scheduling conflicts.”

For many students, fifth block is a valuable time to study, prepare for athletics, and utilize the time in a useful way to reduce commitment conflicts outside of school.

“If I have a meeting or something, and it only runs to around 2:45 p.m., I’ll find myself in the library and I get 20 minutes of work done,” senior Student Council President Ella Liberi said. “We do things outside of the 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. school schedule.”

Teachers’ contract hours end at 3:15 p.m., meaning teachers are required to stay for fifth block. Depending on their commitments, teachers are usually available for students to get extra help on assignments.   

“If you go home, it’s easy to go on your phone and put off your work,” senior Ben Milligan said. “But if you use fifth block, you’re able to get the help right away. Getting help from a teacher is a lot more helpful because they actually know the assignment. It’s definitely better than going home and trying to do it on your own sometimes.”

For many teachers, fifth block is an essential time to communicate with students who might have questions they didn’t want to ask in front of the class or to catch up on work. Keeping fifth block was one of the main contentions in the teachers’ union contract negotiations.

“I think while we have a system that’s working for many, we have to keep using it,” chemistry teacher Mrs. Danielle Ciamaichelo said. “I would be afraid for it to be taken away, because there are plenty of kids that get a lot out of it, and I can’t imagine how work would get made up in any other fashion.”

However, overcommitment to activities can lead to a packed and overwhelming fifth-block schedule, making it difficult for students to manage their activities and commitments during this time. Students sometimes even have to pick one commitment over another because of all the overlaps.

Senior Wendy Chen attended AP Chemistry in her junior year, where fifth block time is often required to succeed. She is in every music ensemble at Haven except for Jazz and Modern Band.

“I accrued a lot of absences in my music groups because I had to go fifth block to get that help for chemistry,” Chen said. “And there just wasn’t a way to avoid it, because I had an ensemble every single day. So there wasn’t just a day where I could go in and focus on my chemistry work. It was always like, ‘Do I get the absence, or do I risk my grade?’”

Chen believes her absences adversely affected her chances for the marching band’s Executive Council.

“There is a limit on how much you can be a part of that’s not out of commitment or out of interest,” she said. “So many groups meet during fifth block that you honestly are not able to go to all of them.”

Saito is the leader of Asian Haven, a Student Council Member, a girls varsity tennis player, and the first chair violist in the orchestra. For many of these activities, fifth block time is vital. However, Saito needs to balance her activities with her AP Chemistry work during fifth block.

“[The AP Chemistry classroom] is where I am most of the time,” Saito said. “It’s super nice to go to fifth block and ask a teacher, ‘Can you explain this to me a little bit better?’ Because they’re going to explain it to you better than anyone else can.”

Getting extra help from teachers often means sacrificing a music class. The music class schedule can already seem overloaded when multiple instrumental and choral ensembles meet on any given day.

“If you want to get more involved in any one of those ensembles, it involves even more trade-offs and even more makeup lessons,” senior Greg Guron, who is also involved in multiple ensembles, said.

Chen spends most of her lunches on makeup lessons, and even then she is rarely able to see her teachers after school.

“I honestly don’t know what a better system would be, but I do know that this system right now doesn’t work very well, because you have students that are so academically engaged in everything, and they want to be a part of these music ensembles, but it’s just simply out of scheduling, which does suck a lot,” she said.

Music make up lessons are required for students who miss class during fifth block. Though, according to music teacher Mr. Nicholas Pignataro, the make-up lesson system is not as cumulative compared to a full class lesson. He explains that missing music class during fifth block requires more commitment and work outside of class.

“I’m willing to help students who miss class only if they’re willing to make it up and do the work and work harder,” he said. “The majority of people who miss music classes are missing it for an outstanding reason, a reason in which they’re doing something really cool, and I don’t want them to stop doing that thing.”

Deciding to purposefully miss class would likely be written up as a cut during blocks one through four. But this is a regular occurrence among students who miss music classes for other fifth block activities.

“I get that there’s a flexible nature to fifth block, and I’m happy to work within that framework, to a degree. It’s not great to teach just some [students] all the time,” Pignataro said.

Pignataro believes the absence of students is due to the nature of Strath Haven’s stress culture.

“There is a fallacy at Strath Haven that everybody can do everything, and the real thing should be that everybody can do anything…that’s different than everything,” he said. “Everybody at Strath Haven is welcome in my ensembles, but not everybody can or should, because they have other things they love.”

There is no perfect formula for how to spend fifth block, but there are ways to use the time more efficiently. Milligan recommends going to teachers for help.

“It doesn’t have to be every day, because if you’re on top of your work in school, you don’t always need it, but if you have tests coming up, getting into your classes and asking for help, what you need to study, what you should focus on, I think that’s the correct use,” Milligan said.

While students like Saito or Chen may struggle to fit their commitments into fifth block, other students find themselves with extra free time and fewer commitments. Junior Cooper Weiland utilizes his fifth block as a study hall and a time before his track practices and meets.

“Sometimes, I stay after in classes, and sometimes, I go in the library, just hang out,” he said.

Wieland finds fifth block time advantageous to his athletic schedule, minimizing the amount of homework to complete outside of school.

“It helps me get my homework done before I get home from track. I don’t have a lot of time in between going to bed and getting home from track,” Wieland said.

Other student-athletes, like Milligan, also use fifth block as gym workout time. It allows student-athletes to take advantage of the many physical activity facilities, such as the weight room, cardio room, or in the gym.

“If you go into the weight room, get your workout done for the day, it’s nice because you get it right after school. You don’t go home and then procrastinate what you’re gonna do, you can kind of get it done right away,” Milligan said.

Then, there’s the group of students that leave before fifth block, or use the time sparingly for extra help for classes. Senior Kelly Montague explains that while fifth block time is useful, she doesn’t stay for the time on most days.

“I don’t really like staying for fifth block, but if I do, it will be to make up some work, maybe get some help with projects or anything,” she said.

Administration has concerns that students who may need fifth block the most are not feeling encouraged to attend and participate.

“Are [students] accessing fifth block, or is that the 2:05 bus is an opportunity to say ‘I’m out of here?’” Principal Mr. Andrew Benzing said. “That’s a big challenge for us as an administration, and it is a faculty [issue], quite frankly.”

Benzing previously taught mathematics at the high school for almost twenty years before transitioning to the curriculum office as the Director of STEM, then to the role of principal in January 2025.

“Twenty yeas ago, at the 2:05 bus, we’d look out the window and there was only a a handful of kids that would leave,” Benzing said. “Fifth block was vibrant and was filled with people. I don’t know if that’s the case today.”

The purpose of fifth block remains as a time for students to connect with extracurriculars but the problem of conflicting activities still continues, especially for students who need access to it the most.

“The intent is still there,” Benzing said. “We still want to give kids access to teachers for as much help as they possibly can to get or want or need, and then still do all the other things.”

In recent school board meetings, community members and teachers have argued to keep the fifth block as it is. Other models have been proposed.

“I think there was some talk about moving it, looking at some other high school models in the middle of the day around a Lunch and Learn period, where you have an hour [long period] and some of that time is spent eating, some of that time is spent getting help,” Interim Superintendent Dr. Jim Scanlon said. “There was some talk about that, but that never happened.”

But what is actually going to happen to it? The answer: no one knows…for now.

“I don’t know that there’s a lot of serious talk about moving it, I think there’s a lot of talk about recentering it and repurposing it. What was it originally meant to do, and how are we really using it?” Scanlon said.

Would moving fifth block to the middle of the day make a significant difference? While it might help more students get involved, it won’t help students who have packed schedules. 

“A lot of things already exist in the fifth block time, so moving it doesn’t really change the fact that it’s cramped,” Guron said. “It might be nice to break up academics, and that is one benefit I could see. But I know not everyone has something during fifth block.”

Pignataro records that on average, approximately 40% of students are absent from attending their fifth block music class, attributing this number to students that also participate in clubs and athletics, and seek extra help in classes.

“I wish there was an altered schedule that had a club built in time that was dedicated for just clubs,” he said. 

Though a revision to the schedule that allocates a dedicated time for music could be beneficial to music classes, the transition must be carefully thought out.

“I’m cautious of any drastic schedule change without considerable study, I’d be cautious to make any considerable effect,” Pignataro said.

Benzing has a vision for a possible change to the lunch schedule. This new schedule would eliminate one lunch period and give students an extra 45 minutes in the school day for a ‘seminar period.’

“Kids could learn in a different [setting] rather than a formal structure of a classroom setting. But they still can learn and get the help they need,” Benzing said.

Following the idea of a seminar period, Benzing suggested the school could possibly eliminate the 2:00 bus option twice a week, meaning students would have to stay in school until 3:00.

“It’s the school day, just extended,” he said. “Obviously, there are challenges to that, which is why this is going to take a long time. Some of these kids work, some go home and watch the younger siblings… this is the kind of stuff you have to work out, which is why there’s a lot of obstacles to it.”

Benzing stresses that any modifications to the schedule, including expectations of students and teachers, will be a careful process.

“Before we make any kind of change, I think we have to give it due diligence: Is it really broken, or is it that we could do it better?” Benzing said. “If we give it our due diligence and we do it better, and we realize it’s still not meeting the mark, then it’s time for a change.”