5/4: A New Upper School Schedule

5/4: A New Upper School Schedule: A Jaguar’s Journey to Academic Excellence and Well-being 

By Brandon Sullivan, upper school academic dean

Change is in the air at Wellington as we look toward the launch of our new Upper School schedule for the 2025-2026 academic year. Built on years of research, thoughtful design, and feedback from our community, the 5/4 Schedule reimagines how time, learning, and well-being intersect to create a more dynamic and supportive experience for students. This evolution represents not just a structure shift but a commitment to empowering each student’s journey through deeper learning, balanced opportunities, and meaningful connections. 

• Class sessions increase from two sessions and 160 minutes to three sessions and 185 minutes per five-day week.
• The benefits of LEAP Days are maintained and distributed throughout the week, including those shortened by holidays.
• Student autonomy and work periods are protected by Task Time. During these periods, all teachers are available via office hours, and all students are free for collaborative study.
• Students seeking challenge may enroll in seven courses per trimester, matching the current schedule. Likewise, they maintain the option to register for additional free periods to best support their academic outcomes.
• The course offerings and curriculum continue to support student choice with nearly 150 offerings – including honors, advanced, and elective courses in each academic department.
• Advisory meets with increased consistency, expanding to a weekly program. Currently, advisory groups and grade-level meetings do not assemble during four-day weeks.
• Pathways elevate Senior Seminar, Junior Initiative, Sophomore Forum, and First-year Survey to weekly occurrences. In these sessions, students engage with flagship programs like College Counseling and WISE.
• Morning Meeting continues as a pillar of our community. On 5C Days, a longer format Assembly provides opportunities for extended announcements like Zimmer Zone, invited guests, short lectures on Nobel prizes, etc.
• Student well-being is supported through a variety of mechanisms including a late start on LEAP Days (5L), Task Time, robust opportunities for student clubs, and infrastructure changes regarding homework. We will continue our philosophy of not having homework due the day after a class, and we create Blue and White Weeks to better distribute the workload between disciplines.
• Athletes are better supported with an earlier closing bell at 3:20 p.m. (days start at 8:25 a.m.) and a greater variety of class periods at the end of the day. These periods are often affected by earlier dismissals for competitive events. 

For an enhanced view of the full rotation, click here. 

As we look to next year, Wellington is excited about the opportunities the 5/4 Schedule will provide our students. Every element of this schedule was designed based on pedagogical research, best practices, and community feedback through the lens of delivering our school’s mission and values.

To learn more about the schedule, including the design process and philosophies, please continue reading.

Building a New Schedule: The daily schedule supports academics, community, and culture. While educators provide the passion for our school to achieve its mission and values, the schedule provides the infrastructure. After a three-year process and extensive engagement with the community, Wellington is excited to launch a new Upper School schedule starting with the 2025-2026 academic year.

A decade ago, the familiar AB-rotation was born. The 80-minute classes brought new and exciting opportunities for depth and breadth and raised the bar for student engagement – as witnessed by our Wellington Engagement Index. Five years later, the landscape changed with the arrival of COVID-19 and Learning from Home. That year was met with novel challenges, but while many schools ground to a halt, Wellington accelerated. We knew that educational experiences are not limited to the four walls of a classroom. Learning happens any time that children connect with their peers and teachers – which includes collaborative free periods, office hours, and the moments before and after the school bell. To protect these valuable minutes during the pandemic, the school established Project Days and Office Hours during Wednesdays of five-day weeks. These days forwent canonical AB-Day classes and established opportunities for students to complete work, visit teachers in person or virtually, recharge when necessary, and perform internships and challenging projects. Coming out of COVID-19, our students were happy, healthy, and thriving. As a result, we fully adopted and rebranded these Wednesdays as LEAP Days – Days for Learning, Exploration, and Projects.

At their core, LEAP Days were established to promote well-being, protect programs of value, and provide opportunities for differentiation through support and challenge. This schedule was celebrated, presented at national conferences, and iterations have been copied across the country. Delivering on our entrepreneurial spirit, Wellington led the way while building strength.  

Those strengths include:

• Longer class periods that support deep dives into content and skill building, and two days between classes to process new information and finish assignments with quality.
• A period dedicated to the Advisory program. In past schedules, Advisory was placed into the second half of lunch once per week – often with conflicts.
• LEAP Academic Block which includes First-year Seminar, Sophomore Forum, Junior Initiative, and Senior Seminar.  These are grade-level courses that cover executive functioning and establish the skills needed to be a successful high school student in grade 9; Career exploration, well-being, and community service in grade 10; Global Engagement, WISE, and College Counseling in grade 11; and College Counseling, leadership, and Senior Buddies in grade 12. These courses provide meaningful programming that is often not taught in traditional schools.
• A protected Study Block where students may seek help from their teachers and work collaboratively with fellow students.
• Academic Flex, where departments invite guest speakers and curate experiences that expand on our academic offerings.
• Unscheduled time in the afternoon for student clubs and study. In addition, we run US/MS Kickbacks, concerts, and special events like the Jag Invite and pep rallies in this window. By scheduling these events on LEAP Days, we protected the minutes utilized by A/B-Day classes.  
• An imaginative schedule that supports nearly 150 courses, student choice, and autonomy. Many parents and alumni noted that the schedule taught time management and was similar to collegiate schedules.

These attributes differentiate Wellington from other schools. Not resting on our laurels, we have continued to study the schedule and find ways to further elevate the student experience. Best practices suggest that independent schools should assess their schedules every five to ten years.  In that window, the AB-rotation is ten years old, and the LEAP Day innovation first appeared five years ago. As we performed this reflection, engaged with research, and collected feedback from all our stakeholders (parents/caregivers, students, teachers, and alumni), we identified several opportunities to further elevate our program and reaffirm our leadership in innovative scheduling. 

The current schedule supports eighty-minute periods and runs LEAP Days (L) on five-day weeks.  When holidays yield four-day weeks, the LEAP Day is dropped, leaving an ABAB rotation. 

Classes in the current schedule meet twice per week for 160 minutes. Some schools meet more often, with weekly totals approaching 200 minutes. One of our primary goals in assessing schedules was to provide teachers with more frequent meetings and additional time with their students. Another goal was to take the benefits of LEAP Day and distribute them throughout the week – especially on four-day weeks. For example, holidays and professional development often conspire to delay programming like Advisory, Study Block, WISE, and College Counseling for two or more weeks. The community also desired solutions to support Athletics’ early dismissals. These strengths and opportunities became the pillars for building the next generation of a Jaguar’s journey. 

After establishing these priorities, the school generated dozens of prototypes and hosted town hall meetings to discuss future calendars. After iterative design and debate, one model emerged that garnered enthusiastic support from faculty, students, and families. When presented in a focus group, one parent remarked, “This feels Wellington.”

The 5/4 Schedule honors the elements that students and families appreciate in the current schedule while solidifying ourselves as an elite, passionate, and innovative school. At Wellington, families do not have to choose between academic excellence and well-being – both are provided by our people and schedules.

The 5/4 Schedule is an elegant solution to a myriad of constraints, goals, and philosophies. Built by a Wellington team, the schedule bolsters our academic program without sacrificing the values that differentiate our school. It is not an exaggeration to state that hundreds of voices throughout the community molded this schedule.

To accomplish our overarching goals, we reduced the number of periods from eight to seven and trimmed classes from eighty to seventy minutes. These actions may seem contrary to our stated objectives, but they are, in fact, the solution. The result is more frequent class meetings and increased instructional minutes while safeguarding LEAP Day programming and student support. 

Let us take a closer look at the 5/4 Schedule

• The new schedule has teachers instructing students three times during a five-day week for 185 total minutes. We considered prototypes that reach 200 minutes, but these required further reducing the number of class periods or eliminating courses and programs that the community deemed essential. With the new schedule, students will see increased time with teachers and can still enroll in the same number of classes as they currently can.  
• To accommodate the increased frequency of classes, some periods will meet on back-to-back days. Feedback showed that students and their families appreciate that, currently, homework is never due the next day. To honor this, the Upper School has agreed that assignments will not be collected during the week’s middle classes.
• To further support students and their well-being, we will establish Blue and White Weeks. These calendar adaptations will prevent “perfect storms,” where multiple tests, papers, and projects occur simultaneously. English, Science, and World Language assessments will occur during Blue Weeks, while History and Mathematics will align with White Weeks. For visual, please see the blue and white shading on next year's full rotation schedule.   
• What was once a required Free Period has now become Task Time. With no one in class during Task Time, all teachers are available via Office Hours and groups completing projects will find collaboration more manageable. In the current schedule, Task Time is only available on LEAP Days through Study Block.  We have expanded that element to seven of the nine daily rotations. In the new model, students seeking challenge may enroll in seven academic periods, meaning students are not losing access to academic class options. Likewise, students can still schedule Free Periods as needed to support academic outcomes.
• Like Study Block, other valuable elements of LEAP Day are maintained in the 5/4 Schedule. The Academic Blocks (First-year Survey, Sophomore Forum, Junior Initiative, and Senior Seminar) are rebranded as Pathways and maintain their position on LEAP Days as will Advisory. Unlike the current schedule, both Advisory and Pathways will meet during four-day weeks on 4B and 4D, respectively.
• The afternoons on LEAP Days (5L) will remain flexible like the current schedule.  This space allows us to protect classes and programs from special schedules like the Jag Invite, pep rallies, Founders Day, etc. On days when special events are not scheduled, students may operate clubs, leave for internships, or study.
• During five-day weeks, we will continue to support well-being by offering a late start on Wednesdays (9 a.m.). Campus will continue to open at 7:30 a.m. for students to visit teachers or work on assessments, or for those arriving early by bus or family drop off.  
• On Thursdays of five-day weeks, we will host Assembly. This is a longer format Morning Meeting for extended announcements like Zimmer Zone, invited guests, short lectures on Nobel prizes, and other programming.
• Wellington students, alumni, and their families value the breadth and diversity seen in our course offerings. The new schedule will continue to offer the same variety of classes in both topic and degree of challenge with honors and advanced options.
• To support our athletes that require early dismissals, two aids have been built into the 5/4 Schedule. First, the final bell will ring at 3:20 p.m. – ten minutes earlier than the current schedule.  Second, we will switch Periods 3 and 4 on 4C days. This provides variability in the closing period to distribute the early dismissals across more courses.
• Morning Meeting was routinely cited as critical to the Wellington experience.  It is a beacon for student voice and ensures our community meets as an entire family each day.  The new schedule sustains this staple on all days minus the LEAP Day.
• Finally, the mornings and second half of lunch will continue to operate as Office Hours and time for Student Clubs. 

Every detail of the 5/4 Schedule has been curated based on best practices, research, and feedback from the community.  Perhaps no schedule has been designed to better reflect a school’s needs, mission, and values.  For students seeking academic challenge, there are a multitude of options for passion, rigor, and curiosity. For those seeking well-being and community, our leap of Jaguars has never been stronger and more supported. The 5/4 Schedule is primed to help our students reach their potential and thrive here at Wellington and beyond.