TA L K O F T H E T- D O C K
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n the 2018-2019 school year, St. Andrew's will begin using a new daily academic schedule. The new schedule design is the result of more than two years of work and study on the issue that has included faculty and student review and research visits to peer institutions. We are excited about the opportunities for more immersive learning, reflection, and collaboration. The overall goal for the new schedule is to engender a more productive and sustainable daily and weekly pace at St. Andrew's that better enables students and faculty to meet their high expectations for themselves and for each other. Our schedule will have longer class periods but fewer classes per day, with a goal of making more time for collaborative and engaged learning. Research confirmed our hunch that longer classes enable immersion, benefit a variety of teaching methods, and foster student balance and engagement. We also found that allowing more time between classes and more breaks throughout the day can provide space for meetings and reflection. The new schedule will also allow the School to offer a variety of new courses, including, for the first time, semester-long electives. Our new class schedule features four class periods per day, each one hour and fifteen minutes long. Classes rotate through the schedule in a repeated pattern over a seven-day cycle. Faculty are reviewing the best practices for teaching 75-minute periods, led by Dean of Teaching & Learning Elizabeth Roach and Department Chairs. Teachers and departments have also been revising current courses and designing new semester courses, all of which can be reviewed in the School’s course catalog, available on the St. Andrew’s website. Under the new schedule, the School has intensified its approach to exploring ideas, current events, and causes larger than ourselves. Our Saturdays will be structured around the following kinds of events and activities: • •
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New Academic Schedule to Debut in 2018-2019 School Year
Special academic exhibitions or demonstrations presented by departments within the School; A cultivation of the art of civil discourse and intellectual argument: students and faculty will join together to discuss and analyze the talks delivered by writers, historians, physicists, environmentalists, and scholars; Further conversations about the art of creating community in diversity, the threat of global warming and the ways we can sustain the earth, and wellness initiatives designed to help the community flourish; ACT/SAT testing for juniors and seniors; Opportunities for Form meetings, Form elections, and Form activities; and Engagement in student leadership development and training.
We believe this new schedule will provide a more balanced and reasonable daily and weekly pace for our students, and as a result, deepen our commitment to academic excellence and rigor. You can read more about the new schedule and review sample weekly student schedules on our website at standrews-de.org/schedule. Winter Review 2018 u 17