One of our primary goals was to balance the delivery of essential content knowledge and skills with our students’ need for recreational time away from their devices. In the Middle School, we created a schedule for an average of 3-4 hours of daily academic work with additional time for advising. In the Upper School, this goal was an average of 5 hours of academic work per day.

During the first three weeks of COL, we surveyed our middle and upper school students on a daily basis and received over 1500 responses. Most students report daily work times close to our intended targets.

The large majority of middle school students are spending 2-4 hours on academic work each day with most upper schoolers spending 2-5 hours. Students in both divisions report spending an average of an additional hour online each day to socialize with friends or connect through clubs and teams. While this transition has been particularly difficult for our seniors who were looking forward to all of the traditional culminating experiences of their time at Maret, this social and community time has helped buoy student emotional health during a truly challenging time.

On our daily survey, the average self-reported mood rating for our students on a 1-10 scale (1=feeling extremely sad, 10=feeling extremely happy) has hovered around a 7.

While we have been pleased to see that the student reality is largely in line with our stated goals, another question we have been exploring is how parents and guardians view those intended goals themselves. During the first three weeks of COL, we received about 175 responses to our Parent and Guardian Survey from all three divisions. When asked whether the COL plan attempts to preserve too little, too much, or an appropriate level of the normal on campus school experience, parent and guardian opinions have widely varied.

• In the broadest possible stroke, about two-thirds of the parent and guardian respondents feel that the original COL plan preserves an appropriate amount of content, with a general preference to add back just a little bit more in some way.
• The remaining third disagree about whether the original COL plan should be slashed or substantially augmented.
• Consensus has been strongest in the Middle School, where 85% - 90% of parent respondents feel that the original COL plan preserves an appropriate level of content.
• Parents of our youngest, oldest, and multi-divisional students have reported much more disparate and polarized opinions, reflecting the diversity of experiences happening in our community right now.
• Rather than leap to changes for these grade levels that seem likely to disrupt as many families as they relieve, we are exploring relatively minor adjustments to delivery format and voluntary extracurricular options rather than changing the scope of the original plan.
• In gathering parent feedback, the other area of consensus that came through clearly was the need for more synchronous time with teachers in the Lower School, particularly in third and fourth grade. In response, we augmented the original COL plan for Lower School to add synchronous times once a week with resource teachers, offer more office hours, and provide optional virtual meetings twice a week between parents and homeroom teachers.

The cornerstone of our student’s educational experience is our outstanding faculty, and considering their needs is a critical part of implementing our COL plan. A testament to the ongoing and intensive work of our Technology team, as we entered the first week of the COL plan, on a faculty survey, the vast majority of our faculty indicated that they felt they had the technological skills and resources to implement the plan.

• Our faculty are not immune from the same pressures and stresses families across the country are feeling.
• When asked to rate the feasibility of demands on them under the original COL plan on a 1 - 10 scale (1=easily achievable, 10=unsustainably high), the average response across all divisions was a 7.4.
• In contemplating some of the suggestions for change that seem minor for a single student, we have recognized that they would impose an unsustainably large burden on the faculty if implemented at scale for all students in a particular class.
• We are also confident that as teachers and students become more practiced with online platforms and routines, our faculty, supported by our expanded Online Learning Leaders group, will continue to find new, manageable techniques to improve the class experience.

We appreciate the insights and perspectives our students, faculty, and parents and guardians have shared over the last few weeks, and we will continue to actively solicit your feedback as the year continues. In such difficult times, it is important for all of us in a community to take a moment to see and listen to each other, and we hope this summary of those perspectives helps us all to more fully appreciate both the commonality and diversity of experience we are each encountering as we move forward together.