Dear Middle School Families,

I continue to marvel at the ways that our middle school community is engaging with distance learning, and it was evident again earlier today as we gathered for our first virtual Morning Meeting.

From the outset of distance learning, we have pledged to learn from the early days of this endeavor and to make improvements to our academic plan in order to provide the best possible experience for students and teachers. We have developed a new schedule that we believe will provide several benefits for students in Grades 6–9. The new schedule will begin Monday, April 13, a D Day.

We will continue to follow a six-day cycle, letter days A–F.
Students will have three to four class periods per day, rather than the six they would have on campus.
All classes will be live (synchronous), including specials.
Each class period is scheduled for 45 minutes. The live portion may be less than that, depending on the lesson.
During live classes, teachers will deliver lessons, host discussions or read-alouds, demonstrate an experiment, or simply be available for questions.
To support students who may not be able to attend, all live classes will be recorded and made available on Google Classroom.
Teachers will continue hosting live study halls at least two days per week, from 2:15 to 3:15 p.m, Monday through Thursday.
Learning Support teachers will continue to meet with their students as scheduled.
Middle School advisor groups will continue to meet live on Mondays and Thursdays from 8:10 to 8:25 a.m.
Middle School Morning Meetings will take place live each Wednesday at 8:15 a.m.

This new schedule will give students unscheduled periods that will provide important social-emotional benefits. It will also reduce the amount of screen time, allow students to take frequent breaks, engage in physical activity and have more time to focus on each task and connect with teachers.

Schedules for each class section are linked on the Middle School Distance Learning page on our website. Advisors will review this new schedule with their advisees tomorrow.

Once more, I offer my thanks for your continuing support of all we do at Foote, and I wish you a safe and relaxing long weekend.

Best,

John Turner

Head of Middle School

Middle School Class Schedules