The issue is that students in high school are overwhelmed with the amount of different classes they are taking at one time. Many students end up focusing on a select couple of classes and blowing off their other subjects. Along with this, students fear heavy workloads, so they sign up for less rigorous courses than what they are capable of, thinking that taking a number of challenging classes at once is overwhelming. Even higher level gifted students tend to blow off certain classes in order to focus more on classes that are on their own level of difficulty, seem more interesting, or are more important to the student. A news article titled, “Blown a fuse? It's sensory overload STOP AND TAKE A BREATH!!!” from the New Zealand Herald talks about the “constant flow of information” that students receive in seven different subjects per day and are expected to process and understand at once. This overwhelming stream of information from completely different subjects throughout the day leads to serious sensory overload. The article defines this overload as this: “Basically, sensory overload is having one or more of a person's senses bombarded with enough stimuli for 10 people and then having no time out so therefore no time to process the new information and prepare your brain for more.” It has been proven by research that sensory overload affects a teenager’s brain during developmental stages that are extremely crucial.

There are several important issues that arise from the overwhelming seven period day structure that high schools follow. Teachers are not considering that students could be receiving heavy workloads in other classes, such as assigning an ample amount of homework or scheduling a crucial exam on the same day as another teacher. This may seem like an unsolvable issue, but there is a functional solution that would simply require the cooperation of high schools around the country. The solution to the problem could be effectively achieved by dividing the school year into seven sections. Each section focuses on one specific class, so for that portion of the year students would only visit that one specific class for the entire school day. During the sections of the year that focus on elective rather than core classes, students would have the opportunity to participate in internships in different work fields. This will aid students in their decisions about future career choices, further cutting down on the stress of high school students as they approach their college years. A web article titled, “Choosing a Career” discusses the importance of experiencing different job fields before deciding what to focus on in college. The article states, “Career seekers might consider what skills they use in activities they engage in during their free time, and then they can explore occupations that use these skills.” This is a great idea posed by the web article; in fact the only issue is in the phrase “free time”. With a seven class schedule including out of school assignments and constant studying, the idea of “free time” for a high school student is completely nonexistent. Utilizing certain sections of a seven section school year for internships would offer an opportunity for students to explore different careers that fit their talents.

The idea of a seven section school year may seem bizarre, but the structure is actually quite simple. Students would spend their day in one class with appropriate breaks to maintain focus. This would allow the teacher to cover all of the course material, plus even some extra interesting information, in the matter of a few weeks rather than an entire year because the class schedule would not be dictated by the clock. A school year is approximately 36 weeks long, so each section would be five weeks long. The remaining few days would be set as in climate weather days and teacher work days. Each section would end just like a normal year, either by a final, if necessary, or an AP exam.
For as long as anyone can remember, school systems in America have functioned a certain way. This is one of the obstacles in the course that America will need to take to solve the crucial problem. Mark Schneider is a vice president for new educational initiatives at the American Institutes for Research, and his viewpoint supports the idea that a change needs to occur. His views were given the title, “There Is Room for Improvement in America's Approach to Education”, and he points out a trend that high school students are taking more academic classes now than ever before. This pattern is leading to students taking lower level classes to avoid being overwhelmed, which leads to the next issue covered by an article titled, “Schools Fall Short in Replacing True Reform”. This article elaborates on the issue that high school students are enrolling in easier classes than what they are capable of due to the fear of the ever increasing workload that seven classes at once can offer. The web page states these shocking statistics: “far too few students are taking the most rigorous curriculum. Only about 13 percent of students take the ‘rigorous’ curriculum, up from 10 percent in 2000 and 5 percent in 1990, but still a low number. More encouraging: 46 percent take the mid level curriculum and the percentage of students with that curriculum continues to expand”. As the web article shows, the fear of becoming overwhelmed by rigorous classes is resulting in an increasing number of students taking on-level classes rather than the challenging courses that most of the students are capable of.
The issue of students being overwhelmed and scared of taking rigorous classes that they should be taking can be solved by a simple rearrangement of the structure of the school year. Breaking the school year into seven sections where students can focus on one class at a time will encourage students to take more challenging classes without fear of overwhelming rigorous classes crossing over each other. Enforcing this new schedule will ensure teachers that they are not overwhelming their students by scheduling ample work or exams at the same time as other teachers. Also, teachers would not have to worry about certain classes falling behind others because they would only have to focus on one class. Students would not only take more appropriate courses in terms of difficulty, but they would also be able to experience different job fields during internships that would aid in their decisions about their future. High school is one of the most exciting times in a person’s life, and by this solution stress and fear wouldn't dampen the great experience.