Leelanau School resumes face-to-face learning
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
After a virtual spring and a mostly closed summer, Glen Arbor’s Leelanau School is welcoming students back for live, three-dimensional, hands-on learning. Tucked in the woods just northeast of town, the bucolic campus with the Crystal River running through it is ready to resume education as usual. But there are precautions. The head of school, Rob Hansen, explains that all local schools have been going through state-mandated protocols in preparation for this school year, with exhaustive attention to details.
“But each individual school has to figure out its own logistics,” he says. “As a boarding school we have to figure out how to spread students in the dormitories (single rooms only this year), how to spread out and move through the cafeteria, how to cook, how to screen everybody, where to put the medical tables, everything. It has been a big job!”
The staff already spent a week preparing the details and routines for students who arrived during Labor Day weekend. “We have had a ton of communication with families all summer,” Hansen continues. “So we don’t anticipate any problems. Everybody is agreeable to the protocols we’ve created.” Students were all required to be tested at home before coming to school. And teachers and staff have all been tested as well, with their swabs analyzed at a testing facility in Grand Rapids. “In case anyone is exposed during travel, we will retest the whole community during the first 7-10 days of school, and expect those results back within 4 or 5 days.” Hansen added. “And of course we will be monitoring everyone for symptoms every day.”
Having a big campus that serves a small, almost handpicked group of college-bound students who learn differently, the Leelanau School is confident it can keep everyone comfortably distanced. “We will have boxed grab-and-go meals, our picnic tables are spread around campus, and it’s easy to spread out in the woods that surround us,” explains Hansen. “We will ask students to only take off their masks when they’re eating or while in their dorm rooms. With a medical person on campus 24-7, and rooms in the infirmary for anyone who is ill, we can quickly isolate a student and make a plan if they are diagnosed, or quarantine anyone with potential exposure.” Hansen adds, “We are blessed to have a health department here that is on top of its game. I can’t say enough about how thorough and professional they have been.” He has been in touch with the Leelanau-Benzie Health Department at least twice a week all summer in preparing for this fall’s opening.
One of Leelanau’s assets is its small size. Most classes have eight or fewer students. The school’s mission is “to help students maintain or rediscover their passion for learning and discovery—by respecting their individual strengths.” As the website Leelanau.org declares: “Leelanau’s rich, supportive environment is a community where teachers love to teach and the focus is on how to learn, rather than what to learn. We are a haven for intelligent and creative students: the bright, the talented, and the inquisitive, who may also feel unchallenged, restless, and anxious. We are particularly beneficial for students with ADHD.”
Being surrounded by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore means that many classes spend time outdoors. “We make learning a joyful process of discovery. That is why we leave the classroom. We go outside. We explore our wooded campus and beyond, make things, and get our hands dirty. We shoot slingshots to learn about parabolic motion. We wade into the river to learn about aquatic life cycles. We don’t do these things because they’re fun—even though they are a lot of fun—we do them because we know, from our own experience as well as from a growing body of educational research, that most students learn best when they are active, hands-on, and totally immersed in a lesson.”
The Leelanau School has also had to revise its yearly schedule because of the pandemic. There will be no initial exploratory camping and bonding trips this year for each grade, nor will there be the usual one-week fall break. Students started classes on September 7 and end the semester with final exams the week ending November 20. They won’t return until after New Year’s Day 2021. “By eliminating both the Thanksgiving and autumn vacations, we aren’t giving up any instructional time from the first semester,” Hansen explains. “Despite having a captive audience as a boarding school, we don’t need to have Saturday classes. The academic support students receive in the evenings and on weekends will continue as usual.”
Will students get a chance to get out and explore the Grand Traverse area? According to Hansen, the school will suspend trips to town “through the reentry period. After the second round of testing, we will reassess compliance with protocols and maybe small numbers of students, three or four at a time, can get out into the community with adult supervision. We don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves! We need to understand everything we do in terms of risk right now. There’s much less risk going off campus to hike than going to town to a movie.”
The school’s cancellation of weddings and summer sports camps due to COVID-19 during the summer months was a blow to the revenue stream, but Leelanau has received Paycheck Protection Program assistance. And Hansen says, “Most of our students who can are returning, so our enrollment is OK. It is even more essential now than it has ever been for us to serve our families. We are a small community, so it’s quick and easy to communicate with everyone involved. We don’t have the big ‘churn’ of hundreds of students coming and going daily like the public schools have. Having small numbers on a big campus, we believe we can be safe.”
