If you’re a school who’s currently using an activity period, or flex block, and looking to manage that time, you may be wondering what software to choose from. When it comes to managing this time, there may be a number of tools to choose from. What makes Enriching Students® a valuable tool?

The Beginning

In 2011, we started working with just one school, ConVal Regional High School, who asked us to develop software to help them manage their daily flex block, called TASC (Teachers in Academic Support Communities). Quickly, this TASC model took off. Other schools who have a daily flexible block, or activity period, during the day began using Enriching Students® as well. With feedback from various educators at these schools, we’ve been able to adjust our product year after year to increasingly meet the needs teachers have day to day in scheduling and assessing their students. Now, schools across the country are using Enriching Students® to schedule their students.

Basic Features

What makes Enriching Students® different from other software options on the market? Our key features allow for ease of use, efficiency, and minimal impact on a school’s IT department.

Scheduling. Enriching Students® offers a wide range of scheduling features. You can choose to quickly schedule students into your homeroom or teaching course in a matter of seconds. Our more advanced scheduling features allow you to schedule students to other teachers, and select even a range of repeating dates for the scheduled appointment to occur on.

Student use. You can enable a feature within Enriching Students® that gives students more control of their scheduling. Our student interface gives students the ability to request, or if your school decides to allow it, even schedule themselves to see specific teachers. This part of our application is optimized for mobile, so students can easily access their schedule on their phone.

Reporting. We believe that data is powerful. Knowing whether or not your program is successful depends on how students are faring. Are they effectively using their flex time? Our student profile page and reporting features allow you to monitor this. In addition, we have reporting features that allows you to monitor department usage, student attendance trends, attendance not taken, and students who are struggling. What an easy way to identify students who need intervention time!

Data import. This is good news for your IT department – Enriching Students® allows for easy, automatic import of student, teacher, and course data. Simply export the needed files from your Student Management System, and upload them to Enriching Students®. In addition, we back up your data hourly, not daily. So the risk of losing large amounts of data is gone!

What is the Value?

We asked Brian Pickering, the now retired principal of ConVal, who was our first contact, why Enriching Students® was so valuable.

In your experience, were there any specific features of Enriching Students® that made it easy for teachers to use, or perhaps more importantly, helped assess and meet the needs of students?

“The ability to schedule students to where they need the help in a timely manner and then keep track of when, where and how they are using their flex time by graphing data was critical. This system has been both easy to learn and easy to use for our teachers which is so important when trying to maximize their time with students.”

Why was this such a valuable tool?

“Enriching Students® provided a tool for teachers and students to change schedules based on the immediate needs of students without trying to keep track of where students were going with an old fashioned “yellow pass system.” This technology tool finally answered the logistical questions for secondary school to provide supports and enrichment for ALL students during the day instead of the hit or miss system of after school help which put undo pressure of teachers, students and parents.”

Let’s build a path to close the learning gap and enrich students’ futures.