Building Connections and Fostering Resilience While Rebuilding Beasley
By Amy Scheer, Head of Lower School
This year of construction has been a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate flexibility and resilience for the youngest learners on the MICDS campus. We have focused on helping students understand how our community can remain strong while the spaces around them are changing. Many adults on this campus worked tirelessly in advance of the school year to ensure that classrooms felt welcoming and familiar, not temporary, and that the strong Beasley program could be implemented with full fidelity during this time of transition. It has been inspiring to see how everyone has adapted and to witness the creativity and responsiveness that unfold each day.
Day after day, there are reminders of what can be accomplished by a strong community and a think-outside-the-box approach. Our librarians continue to foster a love of reading while facilitating book checkouts in a hallway space frequented by classes transitioning to other specials. Students still enjoy meaningful conversations about what they are reading and what interests them, with a full range of books and choices available.
Providing a strong program and helping children feel safe and known in their learning spaces, spaces that reflect their individuality, is at the heart of what we do. With only a short time to prepare for the new school year, every homeroom teacher created a warm and welcoming environment that feels like home for students. Not only are their home bases beautiful and supportive, but the amazing team of specialists reworked their approach to teaching in new and different spaces, too. Our art teacher brings creativity to life on a mobile art cart that recreates the experience of the art studio the students know and love, complete with familiar routines and favorite displays.
World language lessons now take place in homerooms, enriching daily classroom life with culture and vocabulary. Music continues to bring joy and togetherness thanks to the leadership of our music teacher, even while the space does double duty for Extended Day each afternoon. Our science teacher has made full use of the entire campus as a learning environment, while our physical education team has reimagined PE in a smaller gym to make space for family-style lunch each day. Our dining staff has adapted to create a positive, nutritious food experience for the children in our gymeteria!
It can be easy to focus on the challenges that change presents, but the adults and students in Beasley are embracing this moment as an opportunity to grow, adapt, and discover new ways to connect. Hallways are now maximized as learning spaces, and students see their Middle School peers more frequently with shared passing routes. Even carpool routines, which now require a bit more adult assistance, have become moments of connection, an opportunity for faculty and staff to greet students right as they arrive. From morning greetings to shared play spaces and cross-grade partnerships, these new routines help us stay connected as a community. And, these touchpoints help remind us what truly defines our school; it is not the walls or the walkways but the relationships that fill them.
Throughout this process, our students have shown remarkable flexibility and joy. They are learning that community is about people, not places, and that connection is not just in classrooms. Whether reading in a cozy hallway nook, sharing a family-style meal, or waving to older students passing by, they are discovering that learning can happen anywhere.
As we look ahead to the completion of our new library, dining space, entrance, and all of the other amazing new updates, a growing sense of excitement fills the halls. Whenever possible, I share brief glimpses of the construction areas with students, and their eyes light up with anticipation. The new spaces will not only provide beautiful, functional homes for learning but also serve as symbols of what we have already proven this year: that our community is strong, adaptable, and united by a shared love of learning.
Change has taught us many lessons this year about flexibility, teamwork, and creativity. However, the most important lesson is that no matter where we gather, our sense of community and connection remains steadfast. That, more than anything, is the foundation on which we continue to build.