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What Works in Public Education

What Works: In Five Days

by Edutopia Staff

Unlike months or days or years, the natural world does not acknowledge the time divider we call the week. The rising and setting of the sun does not demarcate one seven-day segment from the next, nor is there a weekly equivalent of the lunar cycle. We postindustrialized representatives of homo sapiens, however, feel compelled to carve our planet's annual procession around the Sun into fifty-two discrete chunks, perhaps because days can seem so fleeting and years so endless.

Workplaces and schools trim this artificial unit further to create the five-day "work week," an odd little package of 120 hours -- far less, actually, when you factor in necessities like eating, sleeping, and watching HBO -- that isn't really enough time to complete big assignments or reach significant goals. It is, however, a period when major ventures can launch, good habits can be repeated, and smaller, tighter projects can even go full circle. The five-day span between Blue Monday and Thank God It's Friday presents a weekly chance to begin that journey.

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• Play with Food: A Game Teaches Healthy Diets
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• Blog On: Think and Link with Weblogs

What Works in: 5 Minutes | 5 Weeks | 5 Months | 5 Years

This article originally published on 6/1/2005

This article was also published in the June 2005 issue of Edutopia magazine.