Letters from current parents are somewhat commonplace for schools. In fact, thank you letters from parents about their child’s happiness at Watkinson are a regular occurrence. However, given the enormity of change that occurred to re-open Watkinson during the COVID-19 quarantine, a recent letter from a parent holds particular weight. After receiving the note below,

In any school year it is vital for teachers and students to begin by establishing norms, an agreed upon set of standards to which each class, grade, team or activity agrees to adhere. This year, with the health and safety challenges imposed by a global pandemic, the norms took on a different focus and level

An initial update on our planning for the fall of 2020, Watkinson’s most critical task, one which school leaders  have been working tirelessly at since the last day of school.  One of the certainties of living and planning in the era of this COVID-19 pandemic is the prevailing uncertainty. Nevertheless, the thought and hope of

Eighth-grade science teacher Kim Picard talks about accomplishing the same goals with her students while in a distance learning model. In 8th-grade science, the Rube Goldberg Project is a final unit project in Ms. Picard’s class that synthesizes and teaches each student how to use different types of physics. The core skills each student learns

When we began this period, a few long months ago, our goal was to keep being our real selves for as long as we could. Full-strength Watkinson. We knew that we didn’t want to water down the curriculum. We didn’t go pass/fail, in spite of what many other schools were doing. There’s a kind of

In March, there were many questions for our Chinese students, especially those who returned early to China and were subject to a mandatory 14-day quarantine. School leadership decided to treat the quarantine as a medical leave; that is, students would not be responsible for missed work, although some valiantly carried on. Teachers have been generous

A point of pride for Watkinson faculty is that we teach the range in heterogeneous classrooms, day in and day out.  With small classes (average size is 12-13) and a block schedule where we get to spend 85 minutes with our students every other day, it is conducive to seeing and knowing our students and

After just one week of distance learning, it became very apparent that our middle school students really benefited from having synchronous learning, so much so that one of our early iterations was to ask all middle school teachers to start their classes with a Google Meeting. While it was not required for the real-time online

In the midst of Watkinson’s March break, we realized that our campus was going to have to close and when school resumed, it would be via remote learning. This meant that, like many of our sister private schools, we needed to communicate that fact to our teachers AND set up our post-March break solutions while