Co-Curricular School Life

Physical Education

As in any classroom, the rules of the Physical Education Department (such as athletic socks must be worn with Physical Education uniform, or no cleats in the building at any time, or which doors to use when departing for fields or an away contest) apply to students while in this class.

When proceeding to Phys. Ed., middle schoolers should enter and exit the gym via the gym hall, using either the south steps of Noble Hall (at Preston Lobby) or the Fifth Grade Hall, but taking special care not to disrupt Lower School classes (either Fifth or Fourth Grade) in session. All middle schoolers should exit the gym, via the pool hall and main lobby of Firestone (to reduce congestion in south Noble stairwell). Last period Phys. Ed. students are reminded to wear "school dress" for dismissal from school. If participating in an athletic contest away from school, students should, at the appointed time, leave their books in their lockers, dress for the game check-in with the coach and board the bus. Students being picked-up at an away contest will need to remember to take their books with them to the bus.

Old Trail's Physical Education Dept. will do its best to accurately predict and publish pick-up times after athletic contests. It is the responsibility of the student and family to arrange for that pick-up, before the day of the contest. Since no student will be left unattended at school after an athletic event, late arriving pick-ups are an imposition on coaches. To avoid that imposition and unnecessary phone calls home on the day of an event, arrangement for pick-up should be made in advance of the contest.

The school provides each student with a gym uniform when they enter Sixth Grade. Students are required to have that uniform laundered, as needed, and to keep it in a presentable and un-tattered condition. Replacement shirts and shorts are available for a fee. Students are also required to purchase an OTS warm-up, and to have athletic shoes and socks, and a swim suit and towel every day.

Students with a written note excusing them from Physical Education class should give it to their homeroom teacher at the beginning of the day. Those excused students' names will be published in the faculty's Daily Memo. Those students should proceed to the gym office (on the pool hall), on the day of their excuse to receive instructions for the use of their gym time. Students are not permitted to use the phone before Phys. Ed. class to make arrangements to be excused from that class. Any sudden illness or discomfort will be judged by the appropriate Phys. Ed. teacher, Nurse, or the Division Head. It is the philosophy of the Phys. Ed. Department, and the Middle School, that menstruating adolescent girls participate, as best they can, in Physical Education. This is not to create a hardship, but simply to prepare girls for the realities of participation, in spite of minor pain and discomfort.

Performing Arts

Old Trail Middle School students enjoy professional and centrally located Performing Arts facilities. But, these facilities are so contiguous to other programs' places (namely the Fifth Grade and gymnasium) that some extra guidelines for access and availability are in order. 1) The Stage and/or Music Room make a tempting shortcut from the gym to the P.A. classrooms and back stairs to the sixth grade hall and vice versa. Under no circumstances are students to use this facility for a short cut. 2) When convening on the stage for a scheduled rehearsal, class or meeting, students should use the double doors off the Fifth grade hall, not the Music Room nor the entrances in the moveable wall. 3) Only as an emergency exit, should students use the double glass doors in the orchestra area.

Field Trips/Athletic Trips

Whenever students are traveling away from school with an Old Trail group, they are subject to the same rules, regulations, and high expectations of appropriate behavior that they encounter on school grounds. As in the classroom, the teacher(s) involved will determine what acceptable or unacceptable behavior is. On a bus, students should remain seated, with arms and voices inside, keeping in mind the safety and welfare of all riders.

Sports Awards

Part of Old Trail's philosophy is that everyone participates, whether it be in athletics or academics. Students exemplifying athletic excellence, and good sportsmanship, are recognized at specific Head of School Assemblies at the completion of every season.

To And From School

Every taxpayer in the State of Ohio contributes for students who are transported by public school bus. Students' behavior on the bus, either a public school bus or an OTS bus, is a reflection of their behavior in general. The driver of the school bus is the authority and Old Trail School has an obligation to discipline students who are reported by the driver. The Division Directors, using yellow slips, employ a system of warning, suspension, and final expulsion from the bus for reported infractions. Of course, in-school disciplinary action can also accompany this transportation disciplinary scheme.

At 3:25 p.m., teachers walk primary and intermediate students to designated areas for meeting vans and buses. If your child rides a bus to and/or from school, please help us reinforce the following rules and procedures found in the Ohio State Code:

• • Children must remain seated, keeping aisles and exits clear. Feet need to be kept off seats and seat backs. If the school bus or van is equipped with seat-belts, then riders must use the seat-belts.

  • Children must observe classroom conduct. This includes no teasing or bullying.

  • Eating and drinking are not allowed on the vehicle, except as required for medical reasons

  • When the windows are open, children must keep their hands and heads inside the vehicle.

  • When the vehicle is stopped or crossing railroad tracks, children must remain silent.

  • Objects may not be thrown or passed on, from, or into the vehicle.

  • The noise level on the bus must be conducive to safe driving.

If a concern arises, please discuss it with the bus driver and alert your child’s division director. Consequences for bus/van infractions follow the yellow slip communication system in the school-wide discipline plan.

Personal audio listening devices may be used on the bus, to and from school, but should be kept in a student's book bag or locker upon arrival, and not retrieved until departure from school. Under no circumstances should this equipment be used at all during the school day, or even on school sponsored field trips.

Mopeds and bicycles are excluded as means of transportation to and from school. Skateboards are also not permitted to be used on school grounds.

Library

Your library is your portrait. - Holbrook Jackson

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain

Middle School students are welcome at the library at any time during the school day, and before and after school. Although there is no fixed schedule, teachers will arrange for classes to come into the library to do research, find reading materials, take make-up tests, etc., as the need arises. Books, audiobooks and online databases are available through the library. Email Mrs. Swift with any questions.

The checkout period for Middle School students is two weeks. Items may be renewed once online. Overdue email notices will be sent weekly to the student and parents.

Students with overdues will not be allowed to check out additional library materials unless it is for research. We have no fine system, but students will be charged for lost materials.

Students may use the library after signing out of study hall.

When they come to the library at these times, students should use their time for reading and research. If students misuse this time, they will be sent back to study hall.

Literacy Festival

In the fall around the time of parent conferences we celebrate literacy with a book fair. Sometimes author visits line up with this Literacy Festival. Students preview the book fair in the library creating wish lists that parents can pick up and purchase during conferences. Your family also has the opportunity to donate a book to your child’s classroom library. All proceeds go to the purchase of new books for the library.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. - Samuel Johnson

Research means that you don't know, but are willing to find out.

- Charles F. Kettering

Information is the currency of democracy. - Thomas Jefferson

After-School Care (new for 2016-2017)

Immediately after the final dismissal, students go to their specified room to have a snack and sign-in. The new OTS+ After-School program will provide students with specialized and developmentally appropriate programming. At 3:45 p.m. middle school students are directed to their designated room where they will have quiet time and check homework requirements. From there, students will have an option of:

• Participate in one of many enrichment programs

• Remain in Homebase for guided study, outdoor play (weather permitting)

• Participate in child-interest project work

• Or a combination of these options

Cell phone use is restricted. Students have access to the library phone and parents may call it to contact their children. Library Desk: 330-666-1118 ext. 317.

Students may request to attend an after-school athletic function, but should expect to be accompanied by an after-care supervisor.

Homework

It is the school's philosophy to require meaningful homework from students, and the rule of thumb for Middle School students is 20-30 minutes per core subject, per night. Obviously, there will be some nights when students will have more, or less, homework than others. There will also be nights when periodic homework is required for non-core subjects. To this end, all students will have access to MyTrail, outlining their short-term and long-term assignments. This assignment document is updated weekly on Old Trail School’s Web page. Students will also have an Assignment Planner, which they should consistently update, by integrating daily assignments that may or may not be listed on MyTrail. Students and teachers know that these ad hoc assignments, directives, and adjustments are provided many times a day, by any number of their teachers. Students are encouraged to have their planner handy, so they can assure that it is as useful as it can be, because it is up-to-date.

Teachers may adjust this schedule of assignments, as the week progresses, but students are responsible for noting those changes. Students missing, or preparing two or more unacceptable homeworks per quarter, generally cannot obtain a "4" for effort for that subject on their quarterly report card. Furthermore, each additional missed homework can result in as much as a 1% deduction per missed assignment from their trimester average for that subject. A parent-teacher and/or advisor conference is usually scheduled, at the request of the teacher, for chronic missed homework.

In an attempt to remain sensitive to family plans, teachers will assign projects / long term assignments far enough in advance so that students will not be required to use vacation time to complete work. In essence, routine homework or major projects will not be assigned over Thanksgiving, Winter or Spring breaks.

Advisory

The advisory system was introduced to give students the comfort of having a specified teacher, working on her/his/ behalf. What makes advisory work is assigning the advisor the role of mediating for students and communicating with parents. The advisor attempts to galvanize trust and cooperation with his/her advisee, cultivating student advocacy at school. The advisor learns to trust that the student is trying to play by the rules, as the student learns that the advisor is watching, counting and questioning; demonstrating genuine advocacy.

When students receive comments or grades from the school, we expect that parents and children will take time to review the past academic month, and set goals for the next marking period. Any subject area comments will be forward to the advisor, along with the previous year's ERB CTP 5 assessment.

Just as parents sit down and talk to their children about hopes and short-term academic goals, advisors will reinforce that activity in advisory. The advisor and the student will take time away from their own family-sized group to dream dreams, and make commitments about the next month (or quarter, or semester, or year). In addition, at the end of the first and third quarter, all teachers from each grade-level will come together to share their views of individual student progress. At that "staffing", in a programmed and systematic way, teachers will talk around the table to make a collegial assessment of students' progress. That assessment will be recorded by your advisor, in anticipation of the parent-teacher conferences in the fall and spring.

It is the advisor's responsibility to expedite the scheduling of any additional (or perhaps collaborative) conferences. If at faculty's fall or spring staffing or any other time that any subject area teacher requests a conference, the advisor will coordinate that happening. Parents and students should feel that they, too, can initiate a teacher conference at any time. At parent conference time, parents calling to schedule a conference should expect that they will be meeting with their student's advisor.

Aside from the integration of advisory into the All-School Discipline Plan, and conferencing, it is the advocacy and sense of in loco parentis that makes this dynamic organization of students exciting to teachers.

Advisors are scheduled into one 45 minute advisory period, every six-day cycle, daily face-time during homeroom, and one advisory lunch per session. Advisors integrate programming that might spring from the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education (CSEE), current events, or a local OTS disciplinary issue. They become aware that the time given them is powerful and useful, and indeed accentuates the sense of belonging to a family group within the school.

Middle School's established and still evolving advisory program assures parent-teacher engagement. Just as sixth grade advisors work to welcome students to Middle School and adolescence, our eighth grade advisors program to ease matriculation to high school. Advisory programming focuses on the individual and his/her place in the group and other communities. It is in advisory, a comfortable, familial community, where students can best create/practice altruism, and celebrate differences. Whether students are engaged with the advisor to mediate reasonable consequences for unreasonable behavior, or whether that advisory group is exploring an ethical issue that has global and personal implications, parents can be assured that at the core of the program is our desire to assure individual difference in an environment of thoughtfulness and understanding.

Student Council

A group of student representatives, one per homeroom / advisory group, serve annual terms on the Student Council. This council is naturally dedicated to being the voice of middle school students and issues, and meets regularly together, with the support of faculty advisors.

Social Activities

Social activities are designed to bring together students from the wide geographical area that Old Trail serves. Popular activities, in the past, have included: canoe trips, middle school socials and 7th and 8th grade dances. In addition, all Middle School students are invited to participate in the Ski Club. The Middle School Student Council is also engaged in planning service and social activities. Their annual sponsorship of a middle school social, Spirit Week, a middle school talent show and a walk-a-thon raise money and enhance school spirit. Notification about activities is communicated in advance, usually via email.