Wasted time OR not?

I chose the Best Blog of April, 2007 as my topic, titled 180 days?
There is a PowerPoint presentation in this blog that can bring to light some thoughts about whether there is wasted instructional time during a given school year. There are some very valid ideas and thoughts. For instance, how many days do we, as teachers, spend in preparation for end-of-quarter or end-of-semester exams and then we spend more time with end-of-year finals. In addition, how many days of instruction do we miss for those days before major holidays, days used for fire drills, assemblies, classroom celebrations. Are we giving up precious instructional time for unnecessary things?

On the opposite side of the coin, we can ask ourselves, can we have 180 days of total instructional time and not lose our students along the way? In my opinion there definitely needs to be a happy medium. Children (adults too) need some down time, some time for our brains and bodies to rest. I do not think students could function in an instructional setting of 180 days straight, at least not in the United States. Call it spoiled or whatever you will, but I feel in order to get a full understanding of things being taught, we need to have a few breaks in between.

Check out this blog and let me know what you think, wasted time OR not?