HTH Mesa

Our team has been working hard to create a distance learning plan for our community. Truly, we have worked diligently to capture and adapt the heart of our school to this new context. In our design, we focused on:

Flexibility ~ Families’ situations and needs always vary, but right now that is even more true than normal. In our advisory empathy interviews, we heard a wide variety of different hopes and needs. We built a plan that is hopefully flexible enough that it can match what is important in your family right now while also keeping connected as a community.

Predictability & Structure ~ In these uncertain times, predictability and structure are incredibly important. The schedule provides predictability and structure for students while also maintaining flexibility.

Connection & Joy ~ The universal need we heard from students and families is wanting students to remain connected to each other and their teachers. Connection and community are even more important than normal in times of social distancing Our plan creates regular connections via Zoom meetings in advisory, class groups, and clubs.

Purpose & Growth ~ While we know that we cannot replicate the learning we do in our classrooms, we hope that all our students have a sense of purpose in their work and continue to grow as readers, writers, listeners, speakers, mathematicians, scientists, and collaborators during this time. We will balance that focus on learning and growth with the acknowledgement that we do not want to overwhelm our students and families. Right now many families and students have new struggles that make diving into academics more challenging, and we want honor the reality of living through a pandemic.

In the spirit of the above, here’s what you can expect from HTH Mesa’s distance learning:

• Approximately 3 hours per day of work for students (plus synchronous learning experiences 5 days per week).

  • Students should read, write and do math every day. Teachers have created innovative projects allowing for tremendous student choice. Our student senate academic needs committee will complete their final critique of project plans today.

  • We’ll also have additional challenges and extensions available for interested students.

  • Attached and linked below is a sample daily schedule, but please know we do not expect students to follow this exact schedule.

• Daily synchronous learning experiences (live Zooms with teachers and are other students)

  • Students will take part in "class" on zoom for 60-90 minutes per day. In addition, students should plan to utilize teacher office hours for honors work as well as academic support.

  • Please take care to reference our norms and guidelines about Zoom.

  • Classes are worth credit and work will be assessed to inform a letter grade. Please see attached for our grading policy.

  • Advisory will meet weekly on Wednesdays

  • We are offering optional clubs. Students may commit to more than one, and we encourage students to join at least one.

• Weekly emails with all the information and schedules sent to parents and students.

  • As in the past, teachers will email students and families once per week with plans, lessons and other information.

  • In addition, expect other emails, Google classroom communication and either recorded or synchronous Zoom announcements.

Click here for the Mesa Distance Learning Portal, which contains staff office hours, guidelines for us and for you, and other details.