Weekly divisional updates

Our regularly-scheduled Weekly Update from Head of School Julie Smith will be posted soon. In the meantime, here are highlights from our second week of distance learning:

Elementary
The Elementary Division appreciates the support and help from the families during our transition to online learning. As we move forward, we hope that schedules become more streamlined and easier to navigate—a lot of these areas are new for us, as well. We are working to add Zoom meetings with our specialists and P.E. teacher. The technology learning for the kids is helping with their executive functioning and ability to navigate the online world. Thank you for your feedback, we appreciate all of your suggestions and concerns.
—Danny Martin, Head of Elementary

Middle School
After reviewing the feedback from the parent and student survey, we saw that students and parents are looking for more direct instruction, additional support for struggling students, and more connection in general for students throughout the day. We appreciate your patience as we learn the ins and outs of distance learning as teachers and manage our own home lives. To address these needs, we are putting some strategies in place:

We have made a few updates to the Distance Learning Schedule for Middle School (the updated schedule is posted on the Parent Portal):

• We have divided the students into two groups (Blue and Green), so that teachers are only working with half of the students at a time for each class block. This will allow teachers to work with smaller groups or individually when possible. This means half of the middle school’s schedule changes slightly.
•  We have also added a consistent schedule of Zoom calls for each class block along with links the students can click to join these calls. Parents and students have given feedback that managing the Zoom schedule and links can be challenging, and this should help with that. Also, parents will now have easy visibility to when their student has Zoom calls in case they need or are able to help.
• Adding Social Extras to the schedule during lunch and after instruction. These are opportunities for students to connect with other students socially. We are working on themes and activities that we can do during these times such as play chess! We are still ramping these up, and there is more to come.
• We launched SeeSaw this week to help keep students engaged and connected and to give parents a view into their students’ work. SeeSaw is an online platform where students show what they know using photos, videos, drawings, text, PDFs, and links. We are inviting parents to join SeeSaw over email, so you will be able to view your students posts!

—Genevieve Lawrence, Head of Middle School

High School

• “You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.” —Cesare Pavese

Over the past week, we’ve been working behind the scenes to adjust our scheduling to meet the academic and social emotional needs of our village. We heard from many students and parents that students would like more social interaction opportunities. To that end, we have modified the High School schedule a bit to accommodate this request. The new schedule was rolled out to all high school students today during a Zoom meeting. You can find the revised schedule posted on the Parent Portal. This new schedule has currently scheduled zoom meetings but more may be added as the week progresses so make sure you refer back to this link often.

We continue to be impressed by the level of effort and perseverance displayed by our students. Just within this short period of time, we have noticed tremendous gains in their ability to think critically, manage their time effectively, and meet the particular challenges they face with courage and positivity.

Thank you for all your hard work this week. We truly appreciate all of you and the way you continue to “show up” every day. We miss you dearly. “See” you next week!
—Colleen McQuade, Head of High School