Wayland High School - Educational System

Educational System

While it awaited the completion of the new school, the town began to implement the system of team teaching in 1959, the year preceding the new high school's opening. It became one of the first schools nationwide to do so. The team teaching system grouped teachers according to area of academics. Each group was led by a team leader (a "department head") who organized lessons and led the other teachers, which eased the work of the superintendent, who simply contacted these team leaders to learn what was going on in each department. Before this change was integrated into the education system, teachers were assigned rooms and did not have much contact with their colleagues. With this new system, they were able to better interact with one another and organize themselves more effectively and efficiently.

The change in educational system of Wayland High School was just as significant as that of the architecture. In addition to the team-teaching system, the school now attempted to individualize the students' learning.

While students previously had been assigned to classes according to a loose evaluation of their abilities, a new system of large, medium, and small sized classes provided a means for students to learn at their own pace. In a large class, a teacher, typically the most skilled in the department, would teach a large group of students the basic facts and fundamental ideas in a topic. With this foundation of knowledge, students would attend medium-sized classes of around 8-15 students to discuss in detail what was taught in the large class. The teacher guiding the discussions would be one skilled in attending to each student's progress in learning. Finally, small sized classes consisted of one or two students and allowed for more specific and individual questioning with a teacher. Classroom sizes mimicked this system.

Additionally, each student was assigned a teacher who would guide them throughout their years in high school.

The aim of this new high school was to produce students who were self-propelled and independent enough that they would seek answers for themselves out of an interest of learning.

Although the advent of Sputnik focused the nation on math and science, Wayland did not forget the importance of the humanities. The December 12, 1957 edition of The Town Crier noted, "Anderson said that in any school system the humanities must continue to hold equal status with the sciences, because our children must be well grounded in both if they are to furnish the leaders of tomorrow."