`Zero Hour' Classes Mean Extra Opportunities -- Before- And After- School Courses Give Students Chance To Take Fun Electives

BELLEVUE - It's 6:40 a.m., a dark hour and 10 minutes before sunrise, and the air outside has a chill bite to it. But inside, teacher Pat O'Hanley's Interlake High School classroom, the conversation is heating up.

Coffee mug in hand, O'Hanley is 10 minutes into lecturing 16 students, in varying stages of alertness, on a freedom-of-the-press case involving a high-school newspaper. It's a hot topic in this, her civil-liberties class.

But before dawn? In fact, before regular school even starts?

Yes indeed, and high-school students are tackling subjects before school not just at Interlake but at districts throughout the Puget Sound area.

Issaquah High students are taking a class called work relations. Lake Washington High is one of several high schools where athletes pump iron, for credit, before the first bell rings.

In Federal Way, Decatur High students can choose among 10 before-school offerings, including horticulture, marketing, German and algebra.

Some middle schools are getting into the act. At Beaver Lake in Issaquah, 280 out of 450 students take such courses as Japanese and chorus before regular classes.

Schools too numerous to name offer band then, too. On Mercer Island, fifth-graders at the three elementaries even take free beginning instrumental lessons before class.

So far, Seattle is not among the districts offering the early classes, according to district spokeswoman Dorothy Dubia. Called "zero period" or "zero hour" classes, they're a firmly entrenched fixture.

Now high schools, including Mountlake Terrace in the Edmonds district and Bothell in Northshore, also are offering optional seventh-period classes after regular classes let out. And both those schools will soon add an eighth period.

What all this does is give students more opportunities to learn - maybe to the point of exhaustion for a committed few - and perhaps give an unexpectedly early wake-up to parents, who may not have realized such classes exist. If their kids don't have cars or are too young to drive, they're the ones providing transportation in the wee hours because school buses don't run then.

At Bothell High, Principal Al Haines sees the extended day as the result of too much success and as a natural outgrowth of restructuring. Many of these classes came into being, Haines says, because schools increased graduation requirements in the early 1980s, and motivated students found themselves so booked with heavy electives, such as advanced math or science courses, that before school was the only time they could fit in fun stuff like jazz band.

Now Bothell also offers such after-school credit courses as music theory, chemistry, advanced drama and advanced art.

With school restructuring has come the idea that "we need to look at getting away from the lock-step, six-hour day for everybody," Haines explains.

"Rather than being built on `seat time,' we should be looking at getting everyone up to a certain performance standard," he says. "Maybe arranging classes differently before and after school will help more students do that."

It can also help out the school, Haines adds; one reason chemistry is offered after hours is because science labs are taxed to the max during the regular school day.

Haines has found that very committed students typically are the ones attracted to extra classes. That's also true at Issaquah High, where Assistant Principal Gary Kelly says some high-school kids take zero-hour classes so they can attend community college later in the day.

At Lake Washington High, Principal Paul Gentle sees early classes as a way to "help kids who want elective courses and have trouble working them into their schedule."

His school has been successful in attracting kids to before-school jazz band and after-school driver's education, but hard-core academics at those hours haven't worked.

Indeed, at Interlake, when students hear that seniors Kelly Beethe and Mark Stead have signed up for a 6:30 a.m. civil-liberties class, "they think we're nuts," Beethe says.

Actually, it could be worse. Mountlake Terrace's zero-period jazz band starts at 6:10 a.m. More popular, says registrar Carol McAboy, are the after-school classes - everything from Spanish and geometry to journalism and sculpting - that give students the option of starting school an hour later than normal.

Interlake's Beethe concedes she thought it was pretty crazy to sign up for a 6:30 class, too, until she figured out that would get her out of school in time to begin work at Taco Time at 11 a.m. "I have my days free," she says happily.

As for Stead, he candidly admits he didn't apply himself earlier in his high-school career, so now he's taking civil liberties to fulfill a requirement so he can graduate on time.

Teaching students so early can be a challenge, says O'Hanley, the civil-liberties teacher.

"I do everything I can to make the class interesting so they'll want to come to it," she says, including "doing my best with jokes and anecdotes."

Although at that hour even a professed early riser like O'Hanley can have problems. During a recent class she was trying to maneuver her coffee mug to her lips when she poured coffee all down her front.

"I sometimes think it's these episodes that keep me going," she says, sighing.

Teachers commonly volunteer to teach these early classes. That's true with O'Hanley, an attorney whose school day often ends at noon, allowing her to practice law in the afternoons.

Zero-period classes don't cost the districts extra because there's no extra work involved. Teachers who teach them are then excused from a class period later in the day.

A long block of classrooms away from O'Hanley's, Interlake music teacher Joe Phillips was putting his jazz band through an energetic rendition of "Cruisin' for a Blues-in." It was just 7 a.m.

"I think zero period is the best time for jazz rehearsal," he says, "because they're pretty focused. Sometimes they're tired, but they wake up quickly."

As class lets out, John Stearns packs up his trombone and heads for first period.

"I've never been a morning person, and I'm proud of myself that I can get up and get out of bed and go to school," he says.

Adds drummer Joey Sanchez: "The only thing that gets me up is to play music. If you didn't really love music, you wouldn't be here."