Good Evening SLA-MS Families

We are excited to start the 2020-2021 School year! The staff have been hard at work this summer preparing for what should be a school year like no other. We have thought long and hard about what our schedule will look like and how our system of support for students and families will operate while we wait for the safe return to in-person learning. Before I go into what is new I want to take a moment to go over what is not changing about SLA-MS, even in a pandemic.

We are still an inquiry-driven, project-based learning environment guided by our five Core Values of Inquiry, Research, Collaboration, Presentation, and Reflection. Though happening virtually, our faculty are ready for students to grapple with compelling questions and produce interesting artifacts of what they have learned. We are still a school with Advisory at it’s soul. Advisory will meet twice a week during virtual learning and your advisor is prepared to help guide you through the four dramatic (and weird) years we call Middle School.

New for the 2020-2021 Schedule, Technology, New Building

Technology

We are working on a SLA-MS specific process for technology distribution and handling broken laptops. For now, if you are new to the School District you can pick up a chromebook from the School District Headquarters at 440 North Broad Street, King High School 6100 Stenton Avenue, or Fitzpatrick Elementary 11061 Knights Road. Those three sites are also serving as drop-off centers for machines in need of repair. You will need to give your student ID to pick up a laptop. As soon as we finalize a way to do this at SLA-MS, we will let you know.

New Building

We are almost there! Our building has been under construction throughout the pandemic and is due to be completed early December 2020. As soon as the building is finished, and we are cleared for a safe return to in-person learning, we will move in. I will send some updated photos of the progress in another e-mail. I stop by about once a week, if you can, swing over to 36th Street and Warren Street, it’s going to be a beautiful building.

Schedule

After careful consideration we have come up with the following schedule for all students. Like last year, students will have four courses per quarter, Humanities, Mathematics, Science, and a rotating elective each quarter. We are employing an AA/BB schedule, so that students will have their classes twice a week on consecutive days, i.e Mathematics meeting on Tuesday and Wednesdays from 9:30 to 11:30 each day. Every student will have a class that meets from 9:30-11:30 and a class that meets from 12:30 to 2:30 each Tuesday through Friday.
In addition to regular class time, teachers will be available for small group support from 8:30-9:30 and 2:30-3:30 Tuesdays through Thursdays. The idea for this time is that it is flexible for what students need. A teacher might identify a group of students who need additional support on a concept and assign those students to meet during small group instruction time. Families and students can also self-select into small group instruction time to clarify project descriptions or gain additional insight into the work going on in class.

Advisory will be held Mondays from 10:30-11:30 and Fridays from 8:30-9:30. We hope with starting and ending each week with advisory, students will be well supported to stay on top of their academic work and solve any issues that may arise. In addition to regular Advisory time, Monday afternoon, from 12:30-3:30 will be Advisory check-in/Family Support time. Advisors will schedule one-on-one meetings and families can schedule time with advisors or administrative staff as needed each Monday afternoon.

Starting tomorrow, every family can access their student’s schedule and teachers in Infinite Campus. Advisors are ready to assist with any log-in help you might need.

Here is the schedule in table format

The Team abbreviations are
Ph-Phoenix, Z-Zephyr for 7th and 8th
Pa-Pathfinder, V-Voyager for 5th and 6th

Lastly, you will see and hear a focus on building an anti-bias and anti-racist school community in Advisory this year. Between the pandemic and racial reckoning happening in our city and our country, we believe SLA-MS has an obligation to meet the current moment head on, with support for our students and families. Our staff spent an extra week together this summer planning advisory curriculum, using Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards as a framework. Each Advisory is starting with the Identify Standards and progressing to grade specific standards throughout the year. You can see the Standards here. We are excited to begin this work and continue to build the kind of school and school culture we can all be proud of.

Happy 2020-2021 School Year

Founding Principal
Science Leadership Academy Middle School

Timothy M. Boyle