On April 28, 2011, Jim Marsh, Head of School, hosted the All-Parent Meeting in the Old Gym to explain the changes WCA will undergo upon moving to the new campus.  His main points were Thursday morning seminars, technology integration, advisory periods, the upper school final exam schedule, and the highly anticipated dress code announcement.

Marsh began the meeting by explaining that as the school moves into this new chapter in WCA history, the goal is to become better before bigger.  The board and the administration have carefully analyzed these changes and improvements and continue to pray that they will make us a better school.

One improvement is that a team of three to five teachers will teach Thursday morning Seminars for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors while seniors continue serving at Faith in Action (Senior Service).  This will not eliminate the late start on Thursday mornings, as these seminars will begin at 9:25 AM.  “Life Skills” is currently an elective class only for seniors and will no longer be provided in the future, as the Seminars for each grade will cover what is being taught in that class.

“Seminars are not for a grade; they are to learn about subjects that are relevant in the students’ lives and that are not fully addressed in their other classes,” said Marsh.

The seminar topics, each in six-week blocks, for freshmen will include presentations on oral presentations, counseling and personal identity, and relationship landmines.  Topics for sophomores will be God’s design for relationships and sex, economics, personal finance, and media literacy.  Junior seminars will be about global awareness, college road map planning, and issues of Faith and Science.

Technology integration in middle and upper school will be stressed at the new campus.

Keyboarding will be offered as a mandatory, online course for seventh graders.  Freshmen will be required to take the history course co-taught by a history and a technology teacher with assessments about the history displayed though technology.  The goal is that they will learn to use technology as a tool for learning by using and integrating it into the students’ assessments and presentations.

“Integrating technology, not teaching it separate, is important so the students can apply it as they learn.  Students will learn to use technology as a tool for learning just as a textbook is a tool,” said Marsh.

  Advisory periods will replace Neighborhood times. Every Wednesday for around twenty-five minutes, students will report to their assigned Advisory teacher.  It will be a time for students to connect with teachers, receive academic help, or meet with clubs and organizations such as STUCO.  Upper school lunch, the common time for organizations and clubs to meet, is now split into two periods, so Advisory periods provide time for group meetings.

The final exam week will be eliminated for first semester next year.  Instead, comprehensive assessments will be administered when it is most appropriate or timely to do so. However, there will still be a week of finals at the end of second semester.

“It will be a more efficient and productive use of time and will eliminate problems related to unbalanced semesters.  This will also provide more time for teachers to teach on the schedule that their particular course calls for.  Teachers will have the freedom to give bigger assessments at the time they choose and give them what they think is the appropriate grade weighting,” said Marsh.

First semester will no longer end before Christmas Break, but will end before the Martin Luther King Day weekend in January.

The new dress code for WCA will be Land’s End Standard Dress.  All of the details have not been officially set in stone yet.  

Marsh assured the people at the meeting that the board and administration have been praying about this sensitive and controversial issue for a while and think uniforms will enhance the teaching/learning environment by reducing the time and effort in enforcing the current dress code.  Uniforms, according to Marsh, will also help to remove the distraction of dress at school so that students can better focus on their academic performance.

Five of the goals for the uniforms are that they are simple, affordable, distinctive, sustainable, and that they have a cross-cultural appeal.  Although many of the details have not yet been worked out, it seems that all shirts will be required to have the WCA logo on them.  Marsh added that there will not be a lot but some choice from the Land’s End site.  He estimates that a standard polo shirt with a WCA logo on it from Land’s End will cost around twenty-five dollars.  He also said that special days to dress down might happen every once in a while.

To avoid losing the personal touch as WCA moves into a much bigger campus, there will be an increased upper school guidance and counseling staff.  Kathy Karigan will be the director of Guidance, Tim Holley the director of Spiritual Development, and Carla Meyer the upper school Counselor.

There are also many spaces in the actual new campus building for students to collaborate, in small or large groups, adding to the close community feel in a larger building.

Some of the goals for improving the middle school program include increased teaching minutes, PE/athletic contraction, academic flexibility and creativity, the Advisory period, Academic Lab, service opportunities for eighth graders, and improving reading initiatives.