Organization of the School Year 

There are three main reasons why our school year is structured as it is. The first reason focuses on helping students to pace themselves successfully through a full and demanding school year. The second reason focuses on what our students need to learn about handling transitions and change. The third reason is all about properly managing the school's most important resource - its teachers.

Students with Nonverbal Learning Differences and Asperger's Syndrome are very limited in their ability to sustain focus and attention without fatigue across months of instruction. We know from previous theory and current experience that our students often need shorter days with more breaks. Why? Compared to neurotypical peers, students with NLD and AS do not process information quickly, requiring greater concentration and effort to learn skills and complete tasks. As our students fatigue or experience increased levels of stress, their ability to process new information, to stay organized, and to regulate emotions decreases.

This reality shapes the structure of our calendar and informs the teaching process. Rather than divide the Franklin Academy school year into two 15-week semesters, three 10-week trimesters, or four 7 ½ week quarters, we have adopted five 5-week quints and two shorter intersessions. In general, we use the first week of the quint to introduce new skills; weeks two, three, and four to focus on practicing and mastering those skills; and week five to consolidate the gains and to review. This intra-quint process mirrors the inter-quint process. During quint 1 we assess students. Quints 2 through 4 are used to introduce and practice skills. Finally, quint 5 is used to consolidate skills and reassess in preparation for the start of next year. This process throughout the quint and across the school year is particularly important since we want students to focus on developing and practicing skills above and beyond learning new content information. Frankly, our students find the assimilation of new information to be relatively easy. Far more difficult and challenging is developing the skills to find, organize, analyze, use, and communicate information.

We must also recognize that NLD and AS students can be cognitively rigid. Our students like routine and predictability with as few transitions as possible. Unfortunately, life often surprises and challenges us to adapt and change. This is one of the main reasons why we systematically build variation and disruption into the routine of our weekly schedule and yearly calendar. Thus, the structure of the daily schedule for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday is different from Wednesday and Saturday, and Sunday has its own unique schedule. December and April intersessions are especially good examples of how we intentionally and dramatically alter the daily schedule for two extended times during the year to help our students learn to cope with change - a vital skill that our students must learn if they are to be successful, independent adults. In addition, there are five major vacations during the school year, necessitating travel and transition from school to home and back to school again.

Finally, we face the issue of faculty productivity. Unlike many boarding schools that serve students with special needs, Franklin Academy has one faculty that oversees every aspect of student life, including classroom learning, afternoon activities, dormitory living, and off-campus excursions. The alternative is to hire a teaching faculty and a separate residential faculty. The founding administrative team rejected this option from the outset, given what we have learned through our own considerable boarding school experience and because our intention was to create a coherent team concept at Franklin Academy. Our model enhances communication and allows us to understand all the variables affecting student growth and development.

With six days of classes each week, afternoon activities most days, daily team and community meetings, mealtime supervision, one weekday evening of dormitory duty, and one or two weekends of duty each quint, our teachers are working long hours with little down time. Their engagement with students is continuous. When one considers that so much of the Franklin Academy education occurs outside of the classroom, especially as we deal with the social development of our students, this is a very demanding job. Indeed, over the course of a typical quint (thirty-five days), a teacher has only three days off, and they often work ten to fourteen hours a day. As colleagues like to say, "There is only one shift and that's us."

Beyond our "hands-on" work with students throughout the year, the professional development obligation for Franklin Academy is significant because we have created a model program and we are constantly gaining additional insight and experience as we serve our students. New teachers have a one-week orientation in early July. All of our faculty prepare for the new school year, starting in mid-August. Ten days of vacation time are set aside during the school year for seminars, workshops and meetings, and five days are used after graduation to identify and distill the lessons learned during the school year. Our faculty also staffs the Summer Sojourn program, giving our calendar the look and feel of year-round operation. When you add 240 days of operation with students on campus to 25 days of professional development, the Franklin faculty has a longer work-year than many boarding school teachers. For our faculty to provide quality teaching, day-in and day-out, timely and generous vacations are mandatory in order to restore our teachers and to help pace them through a strenuous school year.

While there have been numerous changes to our daily schedule over the years as we fine tune the needs of our students with the requirements of our program, the structure of the yearly calendar has remained relatively unchanged from the beginning of the school's operation, reflecting a good understanding of our students' learning profile, considerable experience in managing boarding school teachers, and an unwavering commitment to the school's mission.

	Daily Schedule
	Weekly Schedule
	Yearly Schedule
	Calendar for 2010-2011 for Teams A, B, & C
	Franklin Academy Calendar for 2010-11 for FLI

DAILY SCHEDULE

Balancing all the needs

Time is a finite resource that must be managed consciously and carefully. At Franklin Academy, the daily schedule is designed to maximize our available time to meet the needs of our students. All aspects of our life together are taken into account in order to balance the intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social well being of the members of our educational community. The schedule accommodates interdisciplinary fields of study, academic electives, activities, study skills, social skills, homework, and free time. Required life sports, which facilitate health and wellness while minimizing competition, are also a mainstay of our schedule.

Later start time
By starting somewhat later than usual, we allow for a slower warm-up to our day. A leisurely breakfast begins each morning and is followed by team meetings to preview and organize for upcoming classes. Teachers make sure that everyone is ready for the day - physically, mentally, emotionally, and academically, is dressed appropriately, has received any required morning medications, and has all necessary supplies for the day. This time together helps us support one another to begin the day well. Teams then adjourn for community meeting which brings together all teachers and students in the great room of the school house for announcements, the sharing of information or experiences, discussions about issues vital to our life on campus, and daily affirmations. A moment of silence concludes community meeting. Classes typically start shortly after 9:00 am.

Pace
Students with NLD and AS can fatigue easily and need time to re-energize. Therefore, the daily schedule provides a manageable pace to our day with downtime as an important component built into our routine. Required courses in Humanities, Science, Individual & Community, and Mathematics, as well as our elective courses, are offered during hour-long periods in the morning and afternoon. Ten-minute transitions between classes, combined with snacks at mid-morning and mid-afternoon, give our students a short break to refuel and refocus during the day. There is a late-afternoon break before life sports and club activities. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are typically served cafeteria style, and students can come and go as they wish during mealtime, making certain, however, to check in with the duty teacher who takes attendance.

Here is what the daily schedule looks like during the day.

Evening schedule:

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WEEKLY SCHEDULE

Our weekly schedule provides a consistent day-to-day routine on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Wednesday schedule alters the pace somewhat by including a longer community meeting and longer blocks of instructional time. Saturday classes help maintain our routine and provide additional contact time for students and teachers. After the last morning class on Saturday, students begin their weekend: day students and some boarders will go home, while those remaining on campus head to lunch.

The weekend schedule allows for rest and relaxation as well as participation in a wide range of activities. These day and evening activities on and off-campus include excursions across Connecticut and to more distant destinations such as Block Island, Newport, New York City and Boston, a variety of life sports, laser tag, shopping and bookstore trips, Yale football games, school dances, ski trips, barbecues, movies, and religious services. When Sunday evening arrives, students and teachers come together for the 7:00 pm hall meeting to plan and prepare for the upcoming week

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YEARLY SCHEDULE

Orientation
During orientation, we begin the process of building our community. Students learn about their surroundings and each other as they make their way around our beautiful campus and participate in a range of special activities. For any number of students, the experience of being in a new place, meeting new people, initiating friendships, and seeking support can be difficult. Our staff is especially skilled, however, in welcoming every student and managing smooth transitions. Within a very few days, the pangs of homesickness and frequent calls home have subsided as our students immerse themselves in the full and busy life of the Franklin community.

Quints
The school year calendar runs from early September to early June, and there are a total of 210 days of operation when students are on campus. This includes 180 days of classes. We divide our school year into five main terms or "quints," each of which is five weeks in length, to facilitate the project-based, thinking skills curriculum that measures our students' level of conceptual understanding using Bloom's Taxonomy. Since we view a student's matriculation at Franklin Academy as part of an on-going diagnostic assessment, we use the first quint of the year to evaluate class placements, and it is not unusual for a student to change sections as a result of demonstrated skill development. By the beginning of the second quint in mid-October, students settle down into a predictable academic routine, knowing full well the expectations of their teachers and managing with growing confidence the pace of their daily schedule. As the year moves ahead, we expect our students to make practical use of their growing base of knowledge in projects and activities across content areas, applying basic skills to address or solve "real world" problems, thereby reinforcing the relevance of the curriculum and opening eyes to a wealth of connections rarely understood or appreciated.

Intersession
Intersession is a two-week interim after the second and fourth quints. During these unique sessions, students select a single course from a menu of high interest topics, permitting in-depth study to enhance basic and conceptual skills.  Elective options include such courses as Robotics, Performance Poetry, U.S. Government and Policy, Military Aeronautics, The Moral Scale: Good versus Evil, Theater, Pirates, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, American Sign Language, and Art (Murals and Frescos). There are also extended travel/study programs (at additional cost) that have included such destinations as the Caribbean, Mexico, Patagonia, India, England and Scotland, the Mediterranean and destinations closer to home - Washington DC, Montreal, and Civil War battlefields. Seniors frequently participate in off-campus internships.  Past internships have included working at a nursing home, the Goodspeed Opera House, the East Haddam town offices, and a local elementary school. One student had an internship with a veterinarian; another worked for a U.S. Senator.

Vacations
At timely moments throughout the school year, there are well-deserved and lengthy vacations to provide rest for students and faculty and to facilitate the transition between school and home and back to school again. There is a one-week mid-fall vacation, a ten-day Thanksgiving break, a three-week Christmas break, a two-week mid-winter break during the second half of February, and a two-week spring break during the second half of April. These transitions are handled in the same way that we manage the rest of our lives at Franklin Academy - within the context of a supportive community. We recognize that some students with NLD and AS have difficulty with transitions and feel added stress during these times. Therefore, we utilize team meeting, community meetings, and Individual & Community classes to prepare for and work our way through these changes, supporting one another and ensuring that no one is left confused or unprepared for travel and a change in routine.

Summer Sojourn
Franklin Academy runs an optional summer program with 2 two-week sessions, starting at the end of June and running through the month of July. For more information, please see the Summer Sojourn section of our website.

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Franklin Academy Calendar for 2010-2011 for Teams A, B, & C

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Franklin Academy Calendar for 2010-11 for FLI

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