Schedule and Curriculum Changes to Increase Clarity, Consistency and Quality

Working with students, teachers, and parents the week after school ended, we made amazing progress in planning for the coming school year.

Our work together affirmed that much of what we do at Compass is tremendous education, even magical. Experiences such as the Film Festival, Science of the Mind, Community Service Winter Term, Project Week, the Junior class International Travel, Middle School Exchange Program, and Giving Day reflect the best about Compass and transformative learning. At the same time, some themes that arose in our shared work were the need for greater “rigor,” consistency, and clarity. Through a lot of challenging thinking, compromise, and creativity, we feel we have a plan for some schedule changes that will allow us to simplify the schedule while enhancing the educational program in many respects.

While the details are still evolving, some of the promising ideas we are pursuing include:

*         Moving to a semester calendar to allow more extended courses and continuity and to align with the real calendar for vacation breaks in the year.

*         Having a slightly different schedule in the first semester from second. We will have 5 blocks in the Fall Semester to allow us to balance our academic time to carve out more for “English” and “Social Studies.” The high school will have three hour-long classes, one in Science, one in a “Social Studies” focused Humanities course with Amir, and another in an “English” focused Humanities course with Julia. We feel this will facilitate “core studies” in the Fall with the fundamental content and skills of these disciplines. Every High Schooler will be with Amir and Julia every day so will benefit from this consistency and quality.

The second semester will follow the same four block schedule we have used for years, allowing for more in depth courses and electives that touch upon multiple disciplines. There is much more that this two semester schedule facilitates, all of which we think enhance educational possibilities.

*         The Middle School will have more control over their own schedule as the teachers for this group—Lauren, Louise, and Ron—will have the flexibility in their schedules to adapt without having obligations to other high school courses that they had this past year. This will facilitate the middle school modifying as needed based on the energy of this age group on any given day.

*        Wednesdays are being simplified by having Math and Spanish the first two blocks just like the rest of the week. No more having to figure out (for students or teachers) if this Wednesday is a Math or Spanish day.

*         High school will have a “seminar” period each Wednesday where students meet by class. Seniors will be with Julia for College and Senior Project Planning, juniors with Rick for international trip planning, and ninth and tenth graders will be with Amir and Eric for “Leadership Development” which will include a lot about making the most of their opportunities, finding direction, and celebrating life.

*         It is likely we will move Senior Project and the Junior class international trip into the time period of January until (or through) Winter Term. This will relieve some of the rushed pressure on Seniors in the late Spring, when they also have to complete their Graduation Portfolio. It also makes us much more flexible about scheduling for the Projects and Trips as there is a 5 or 6 week window for the actual field experience. This also allows for the valuable time we need after the trip or project field experience to reflect and process these experiences and prepare to present learning to the larger community. Finally, this facilitates more extended elective courses late in the Spring (such as filmmaking) which will benefit from more time and greater depth.

*         Exploratories are being modified to increase focus. Based on a proposal generated by students, we plan to dedicate two days a week for “intensives.” This will involve a limited number of offerings—something like one in art, music, physical, academic, and maybe one other area—each of which are two day, high quality learning experiences. This will result in larger exploratory groups, allowing something like chorus to develop, and enable hiring high quality teachers in the arts who can develop curriculum with purpose and skill development in these important subjects. The third exploratory day will be like past exploratories—allowing for exploring new experiences with others and expanding one’s horizons.

*         There a variety of ways high school students, particularly 11^th and 12^th graders, will be able to pursue independent learning in the coming year. For example, on Wednesday afternoons, older students in good academic standing will be able to leave school for internships or community service or other approved learning. Likewise, students will be encouraged to develop their own “intensive” exploratories that might occur outside school.

As you can see, we have made changes that we believe markedly increase consistency and intentionality in all we do. We are confident this will lessen confusions and related stresses while facilitating more of the high quality and purposeful learning for which Compass is well appreciated.

Our work last week engaged us in deep discussions about all the many goals we have to provide students with the best education imaginable. We know there are always tradeoffs of depth vs. breadth, flexibility vs. structure, opportunities for new exploration vs. opportunities to pursue past interests, core studies vs. electives, longer and more open time periods vs. shorter and more focused periods, etc. We think we have found an excellent balance for the coming year. While we know there is never enough time to do all we wish to do, we think these changes open up many possibilities while significantly improving clarity and purpose.