Wayland Middle School
April Newsletter
Mark Your Calendar
All Grades:
4/12 - Q3 Report Cards
4/15 - 4/19 April Vacation

7th Grade:
4/12 - 2nd Cape Cod Payment Due
5/22 to 5/24 - Cape Cod Trip
6/11 - Cape Cod Night (7-8:30 pm)

8th Grade:
5/16 - DC Night (7-8:30 pm)
Message from Principal Gavron
Any new change brings an opportunity to reimagine and improve how we operate. As you probably know, after many years of debate, our school committee voted to begin middle school an hour later starting next year -- 2019-2020. The new times are in place to encourage adolescents to sleep later, allowing for a sleep cycle that is more synchronized with the typical teen circadian rhythm. While there are a myriad of opinions around the start time change ranging from, “Thank goodness. It is long overdue,” to, “This is a travesty that disrupts my world,” change is on the horizon. The adjustment has us thinking about new morning routines and how we might enhance our school culture to optimize connections. Secondly, we are investigating how we can better make our master schedule work for us. Finally, I encourage you, our WMS families, to use the new schedule as an opportunity to reflect on your own extracurricular calendars in order to maximize the potential benefits of the later start time.

Next year students at Wayland Middle School will begin their school day at 8:40 AM rather than 7:35 AM. Our school doors will open 30 minutes before school starts at 8:10 AM, and all teachers will be on site when students arrive. This is a significant change from our current model, where doors open as early as 7:00 AM to allow for AM Wellness. Our popular AM Wellness program will still be offered before school beginning at 8:10 next year, but we will not be shifting historically afternoon offerings (such as clubs) to the morning, as that could defeat the potential benefits of sleeping later. Families who need to leave for work early should begin thinking through their before school child care arrangements. Please know that there will be an AM BASE program offered onsite for 6th - 8th graders from 7:00 - 8:30 AM and families should consider this option, as non-BASE students will not be buzzed into the building prior to 8:10 AM, nor can they be congregating outside on campus. 

In addition to a later arrival, staff and our school council have discussed at length cell phones and smart watches. We have come to a decision about a substantive change in how our before and after school time will look. Next year we will not be allowing student cell phone use in the building before and after school, nor will students be allowed to carry their phones and visibly wear smart watches in the building throughout the day. If we see them we will take them and store them in the front office.

If brought to school at all, for afterschool communication with families or afterschool use, phones and watches will be expected to be powered down and stored in lockers. (We will be reminding students to lock their lockers.) No longer will we see students sitting in the hallway before/after school staring at their phones rather than conversing face-to-face with the classmates sitting beside them. No longer will morning greetings fall on deaf ears as students, preoccupied by the airpods pumping music into their ears, miss out on morning hellos. No longer will students be mesmerized by the cell phone rather than the live WMS basketball game in front of them that they stayed after school to “watch.” While phones have been expected to be off throughout the school day since their evolution, having them off and away whenever students are in the building is a significant shift. Many schools have made similar choices due to the research about the impact of cell phones. Abigail Hess’ CNBC article from January 19, 2019 outlines what its title purports, “Research continually shows how distracting cell phones are - so some schools want to ban them.” Perhaps the most striking research out of the University of Chicago offers that, even when cell phones are turned off, turned face down or put away, their mere presence in the room impairs people’s cognitive capacity. The desire to send a snapchat, view an instagram feed, or check that latest text that has arrived (often from a parent - please don’t text students during the school day) distracts from focused learning and face-to-face, in person, social experiences that we so value.

In addition to decisions around technology, a later start time has had us re-imagining our master schedule. Due to the sharing of staff across the district, our FLEX time, which houses our elective performing music programming (band, chorus and orchestra), will shift from morning to afternoon (2nd block to 5th block). We have also used the time change as an opportunity to better align the class colors of 6th grade with those of 7th and 8th grade, allowing 6th grade teachers to more easily teach a section out of grade, in response to class size differences that require more staffing at the older grade levels. While we have contemplated more radical schedule changes and programmatic shifts - specifically including recess, more computer programming, and beginning world languages in 6th grade rather than 7th (our Spanish immersion students will be joining us at WMS before we know it), we recognize that changes of that magnitude involve staffing reallocation and require significant, time-consuming planning before possible implementation. We have convened a scheduling team that will continue to explore these possibilities, and we may pilot some new curricular units on a small scale next year. In the coming year we will evaluate pilots and continue to discuss these larger possible changes with staff and with our School Council.

As you and your family prepare for the start time change next year, I encourage you to consider ways in which you can help ensure the benefits of a later wake up time are truly felt by your student(s). Make sure students don’t simply extend their day and go to bed later. Our most recent data tells us that many WMS students report experiencing significant stress. When we have dug deeper into the causes of that stress, students report that in addition to worries around assessments and homework load, many feel incredibly over scheduled with extracurricular academics and activities (exacerbating their school academic worries). Trying to pack the same number of activities into fewer available after school hours could negatively heighten the impact of stress. Instead, as we are self-reflecting our school practices I encourage you to apply the same level of scrutiny to your afternoon/evening schedule. Next year is a good time to reevaluate, prioritize and ask which activities are bringing your child the most joy? What can you consider omitting? Consider how less might ultimately be more fulfilling for your student.

Whether you embrace change or it seek to avoid it, change is inevitable in schools. Despite the need for new routines, I see the positive potential that our new start time will offer us, and I am excited by chances to deepen connections by reducing time on technology and make our master schedule better for students and teachers. I hope you will join me in re-evaluating your after school schedule to ensure time for rest and relaxation along side fulfilling extracurriculars. Here is to a planning for a wonderful 2019-2020.

Respectfully,
Betsy Gavron
Announcements
Stop & Shop Rewards A+ Rewards - THANK YOU!!

WMS has earned    $2,529.75    for this school year, a huge than you to all who participated. The program ended on March 15th. Please be on the look out early next year for participation details during the 2019-2020 school year!
PTO News
Contact:   WaylandMiddleSchoolPTO@gmail.com
WE NEED HELP NEXT SCHOOL YEAR!
Volunteer for a Board or Committee role
There are a numerous ways to get involved with varying degrees of time involvement; many roles are flexible. Volunteering is a wonderful way to get to know other parents, the school, teachers and administrators. Click here to read descriptions of volunteer roles.

Email WaylandMiddleSchoolPTO@gmail.com if interested or with any questions.
All-District Bus Driver & Crossing Guard Appreciation Event
Wednesday, April 10, at 9:15 a.m. Happy Hollow School

The PTO is hosting a district wide appreciation event for our district bus drivers and crossing guards on April 10th. Bus drivers not only take our kids to/from school, but also to field trips and activities. Our crossing guards help our walking/biking kids get to school safely.
Middle & More Coffees: Parent Seminars

Your Middle School Kid's Gonna Be Okay: How Parents Can Facilitate Their Child's Executive Function Development
Michael Delman, CEO of Beyond BookSmart
Thursday, May 16, 9:00 am

Conflict Resolution with Middle School Children
Dr. Lindsay Steinsieck, PSYD, and Shannon M ackey, MSW,
of the Human Relations Service
Tuesday, June 4, 9:00 am  
Attention 8th Grade Parents!
Washington D.C. Breakfast
April 12, 2019
The PTO will welcome back the 8th grade students and teachers from the Washington D.C. trip with a light breakfast. If you can send in supplies or help out, please click this SignUp link . Many thanks, 8th grade parent reps, Colleen Morneweck, Keri Schouten & Peg Burgess.
Artist of the Week
Artist: Sammy Carpenter
Grade: 6
Medium: Watercolor on Plastic
Reminders
MCAS Dates
Please mark your calendars. If at all possible, we ask you to avoid scheduling appointments for your child on his or her testing dates. Thank you!
6th Grade:
Math : May 6 & 7
7th Grade:
Math : May 9 & 10
8th Grade:
ELA : April 25 & 26
Math : April 29 & 30
STE : May 2 & 3
For Parents of Current 6th & 7th Graders
Student Placement Requests for 2019-2020 School Year
Deadline: Wednesday, May 1   
 
Considerable thought and effort are given to student scheduling here at WMS. It is a highly complex, intricate, and time-consuming process. Parents may make specific placement requests only under the following circumstances:
 
  • If you have concerns about a teacher based on an older sibling's experience, you may request a different teacher for your child. You may not, however,request a specific teacher.
  • If your child has had difficulty with a specific student which has negatively impacted your child's ability to learn, you may request that the children be placed in separate clusters.
  • Please know that we cannot consider requests from parents to place students together.

Requests must be sent via email to  betsy_gavron@wayland.k12.ma.us  no later than  Wednesday, May 1st . Please include your child's first and last name, and grade they will be in as of September 2019. Although we will work hard to honor your request, we cannot make any guarantees.
Lost & Found
Deadline: Friday, April 12 at 2:30 pm

Please have your child check for missing items in our Lost & Found, or come and take a look for yourself! Unclaimed items will be donated to charity (to the Wayland Schools' PTO Green Team Textile Recycling Project) as is our custom prior to each of the school breaks.
Wayland Middle School
Phone: 508.358.3801 Fax: 508.358.3802
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