It depends on the teacher, I guess. I remember in the 2nd high school I went to a buzzer went off 5 minutes before the class is over buzzer, as a warning to the teacher to start winding things down.
My teachers were just as eager to get rid of us as we were to leave. They generally finished anything resembling teaching long before the bell rang.
You’d have to bolt at the bell, otherwise you’d never make it to your next class on time. Sometimes you’d get a real jerkwad teacher that would, when you started to bolt, yell at you to stop and then finish whatever he/she wanted to say, and no one dared move when that happened, but then you’d basically have to run in the halls (and risk getting yelled at for that of course) to get to your next class. Heaven help you if you needed to stop at your locker first.
Really? That has the obvious advantage of requiring only one person to hurry off instead of 20, but then doesn’t everyone have to have the same curriculum?
Let me put it this way–if you are just outside of the classroom, stay clear of the door, lest trampling occur.
This is exactly my experience at both the private and public schools I went to. My son’s school does not have a bell system. Teachers just dismiss kids at the end of the period.
I don’t recall the break between classes that rushed. Running in the hallway was not allowed. Seems like it was 10 mins. But that was 40 years ago and I just don’t recall. Nearly all my junior high classes were on one long hallway. So usually my next classroom was less than 200 ft away. Sometimes it was just a matter of crossing the hallway. 
I do remember many times sitting at my desk several mins before the teacher got there.
7th grade was the exception. They were maxed out on space and had three small portable buildings for classrooms. I had homeroom in one and a history class in the afternoon. That was a pretty long walk out to them. I needed most of that 10 min break to get there from the main building.
bell rang - we began packing up our books. we didn’t stand up until teacher said dismissed. Pretty sure the bell rang at 50 min and at the hour. giving us 10 mins
Kiwi here
- In secondary school the students moved classrooms - mostly because each teacher would have resources specific to their subject in the room. So it made more sense for the teacher to stay put.
- We also had special purpose classrooms (typing, home economics and woodwork) so moved for those
- The bell was for the teacher - not for us. As we moved around the school as a group, if one teacher was late dismissing us, the next wouldn’t punish us.
- My highschool had around 130 pupils from age 12-18 or so.
Mmm…maybe American schools have very short times between periods. As best I can recall (its been a few years :D) we had 5 minutes to move to the next classroom but even in a 1000 pupil school that was long enough. Nobody went to their lockers because you carried enough for the first 2 periods, then interval (break) of 15 mins so you could pick up books if necessary, then another 2 periods until lunch.
Basically, yes, and 20? HAH! Think 40ish back when I was in school, and in college it can be hundreds… There are choices but these work in two ways:
- “streams”, such as “pure sciences” vs “applied sciences”. Anybody from a given stream gets the same courses except for
- individual electives, such as “draftsmanship -or- accounting”, “English -or- French”.
The groups are formed so that the immense majority if not all students in a given group have the same courses. When part of a group of students has a subject and another part has a different subject, one or both subgroups will move.
An easy-ish example, my 10th grade, which wasn’t divided in streams yet (college-track people my age picked those for 11th and 12th only; trades were different schools). My group, BUP 2E, included every student who took French plus enough ESL students to make up the group’s numbers. French always had its own classroom (right beside BUP 2E, just by happenstance), so they moved next door and we stayed. Half of us took Draftsmanship (which was in its own classroom), half took Accounting: they stayed, we trooped down to the appropriate classroom. The other subject which involved moving was Phys Ed, but that’s one for which everybody moves.
We also didn’t have lockers: desks have enough space for books and notebooks, including extra large materials such as draftsmanship paper.
This american heard “I dismiss you, not the bell!” a lot in middle and high school. But especially in high school, it was small enough that most of the students got away with using their backpacks during the day and you’d load up with the books and notes you’d need for that day’s classes so you didn’t need to stop at your locker every hour.
I went to high school in Virginia in the 80s; there were two bells, the first indicated the end of a class and five minutes later, the second indicated the start of the next class. If you weren’t in your seat by the second bell, you were tardy and could get a write-up, get enough write-ups and you were in trouble. When the bell rang, everyone jumped up and hauled ass to their next class. There was no waiting for the teacher to dismiss the class.
In fifth grade I had a prick of a teacher who wanted to pull this on the last day of school. I went out the window.
My teachers were virtually always finished before the bell rang.
The same thing in my high school.
I went to a parochial grammar school (grades 1-8) in the 1960s. It was even stricter – you had to form up in lines in the classroom for dismissal, then each room was allowed out in turn. You had to stay in your lines down the corridor, out the door, and about a block down the sidewalk.
I saw those TV shows with a crowd of kids bursting out of the school doors as a kid, and thought they must take place in some other universe.
For me the teacher had better damn well be finished before the bell. It was a formal signal that their time as authority over you was over. Any teacher that tried keeping students would cause them to be late to the next teacher’s class, so that didn’t fly.
I would like to add that during a year and a half of my high school experience, I had “block scheduling” with classes every other day for twice as long as usual. That was awesome. There was never a need to squeeze that last bit of lecture in, and that wasted 5 or 10 minutes the beginning and end of class was instead useful. It was nice to get back to that in college.
exactly
Lots of classes I was a clock watcher
Same for New York State and Louisiana in the '80s, although there was the occasional teacher on a power trip.
My schedule worked out that I’d be passing my locker at least twice a day and could use that time to swap backpack contents.
Canada (specifically Ontario) here.
When that bell rang, we were out of there. Didn’t matter if the teacher had finished speaking or not, we were gone when the bell rang.