COVID-19 Information and Updates

Dear Hyde Community,

After careful consideration, based on both federal and state public health guidance, we have decided to reopen Hyde School’s campus for in-person learning. Our plans to resume Hyde’s co-curricular character education learning program are predicated on all relevant public health advice, particularly that of the State of Maine and local officials, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). As such, with a reimagined vision of life on campus, we have begun to chart our course for the coming school year… Read our full plan by clicking the link below.

See Our Plan Here

Hyde Athletics Home Program Week #1

Welcome to Wolfpack Fitness!

Tune in tonight (March 31, 2020) at 7:00pm for the Athletics Webinar and an explanation of the remote learning Athletics Program, Wolfpack Fitness!

Copy and paste this link into your address bar:
https://meet.google.com/evn-frqp-vmd?hs=122
click this button to join the Webinar:

Join the Webianr

Parents: Reminder this is the same link that you will use every night to log into the optional nightly webinars that are on the schedule. There is more information on the webinars in the “Reminders And Tips” section at the bottom of this email.

---

Please follow the steps below as we prepare for Week #1 of Wolfpack Fitness!

Step 1: In order to calculate your steps download the app “StepsApp Pedometer”
Step 2: Steps Goal – 25,000 Steps for Week 1
Step 3: Perform home exercise workouts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Following each week, send in your Weekly Step Count and a brief description of how your Athletics went.

Throughout our remote learning period we will be keeping track of each student’s step count. A leaderboard will be posted following each week. Please send a screenshot of your weekly counts to either to Stefan Jensen (sjensen@hyde.edu), Murphy Duffy (mduffy@hyde.edu) or Kearney Gutierrez (kgutierrez@hyde.edu).

---

Hyde Families and Students,

I hope this finds you well and that most of your questions have been answered as we gear up to begin our remote learning on Monday!

We have put a lot of work into preparing what we hope will be engaging classes and a well-rounded schedule to keep our mental and physical wheels turning during this time of social distancing. With no doubt, some of us will likely run into issues as we navigate the first few days, so stay patient and know that we always welcome feedback to make this experience meaningful for all of you.

We go LIVE on Monday, March 30th at 10:30 am EST beginning with Discovery Group check-ins, followed by academic classes. You may elect to do your workout in the morning before we begin or in the afternoon.

---

Reminders And Tips:

• You can find the schedule for the week here.

Hyde Schedule

• This is a video tutorial of how to log into your discovery groups and academic classes. You should practice with Google Hangouts Meet before Monday to ensure you have webcam and audio settings ready to go.

Video Tutorial

• Here is the link for the reoccurring Nightly Webinars that are on the schedule. You can join by clicking the link here or you may save the link and paste it into the address bar at 7:00 to join that night’s Webinar.

Webinar Link

https://meet.google.com/evn-frqp-vmd?hs=122

This link is also present on your Student’s Google Calendar. The link will be the same for every Webinar, it will not change, so feel free to save this link however it is easiest for you.

• 100% live class attendance is expected if you live in the Continental US.
• Those in other countries will have access to the recorded classes in your Google Classrooms.
• Those of you in China will be in contact with folks via WeChat and your email address.
• Your Discovery Group Leaders and teachers will do everything they can to answer any of your questions as they arise.
• Refer to our Remote Learning Student Expectations. Please read it carefully and follow the guidelines listed.

Remote Learning Student Expectations

---

Don’t forget about our community reading project.

Families and students need to pick a book to read and we will discuss them in groups as we go through the spring.

Students will begin with one of the following:

• Educated by Tara Westover — A coming of age memoir and a portrait of resilience, courage and the power of education.

OR

• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens — A mystery, a celebration of the natural world, and the story of a young woman’s commitment to being herself and to fighting for her passions.

Parents, Faculty, and Staff will begin with one of the following:

• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell–an incredible novel that plays on the theme of isolation (in this case in 18th- and early 19th-century Japan) and tells a story about the courage of commitment and the meaning of truth. It is one of the best novels of recent years

OR

• The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The title speaks for itself!

---

Stay safe, commit to starting this new adventure of remote learning in a positive manner, and we’ll get through this together!

Best wishes from all of us on campus!

Crystal Peltzer
Director of Studies

Dear Hyde Alumni, HAPA, and Friends,

On behalf of all of us here in Bath, I truly hope that this letter finds you and your loved ones
well and moving forward. As we continue to navigate through a changing world, we want to
connect with our Alumni, HAPA, and friends to provide support, challenge, encouragement,
and a sense of community while also updating you on what is happening here at school.
Please continue to visit this page to see the updates posted on our ongoing communications.

While most of our students were on spring break when the news of nation-wide school closures
took place, there has been a group of international students who are still on campus working
with a few faculty members who were not able to travel home. They have shown caring,
courage, and creativity as they enjoy some downtime and make the most of their situation.
Most of the faculty have returned from spring break and are self-isolating in their apartments
here on campus while some are isolating off-campus. The team continues to work tirelessly
to put into place our new remote educational program, which will begin on March 30th. Most
of the staff are working remotely but we will continue answering our telephones, receiving
mail, processing gifts and checking in on our Hyde family. Our employees are active,
engaged, and working as hard as ever on your behalf.

In times like these, that means more than ever. We have already begun working on some
opportunities to connect remotely as a community and look forward to sharing more details
about these opportunities in the coming weeks. Long time Hyde veteran Bob Felt is working
with our founder Joey Gauld to set up remote Hyde conversations and many alums and
HAPAs are offering to help our current students and families during this time. First, we want
to ensure that those interested can receive news and information.

We encourage each of you to click on this form to update your contact information.

You can also email us at alumni@hyde.edu (whether you’re an alum, HAPA, or friend)!
Please follow us on Facebook @HydeSchool and @HydeAlumni and on Instagram
@HydeSchool and share with us using the hashtag #wearehyde.

We are deeply grateful to the Hyde community during this time. Whatever we face in the
coming weeks and months, we will face together. Stay safe, follow health guidelines, and I
know that we will take care of each other. #wearehyde

Sincerely,

Laura D. Gauld ’76
President & Head of School

 

Onward,

Laura D. Gauld ’76
President & Head of School

Dear Hyde Families,

As we continue to navigate through a new world, it seems that our only constant is the change that is unfolding each day. No doubt many of you, like many of us at Hyde, are staying at home and balancing both your professional roles as well as your biggest job as parents! While our adult children are no longer in residence, Malcolm and I are in regular communication with them and Harrison just came for a visit. There are certainly many opportunities that his autism presents, but it was clear that he is blissfully unaware that the world is in lockdown mode. He helped me to see that life is still about making connections even if we cannot hug or even stand too close to each other right now.

Here at school, life has also changed dramatically. The faculty who are returning from spring break are self-isolating in their apartments here on campus and some are at home off-campus. Most of the staff are working remotely so that we can limit human contact on campus. There is a small crew working to thoroughly clean and disinfect each building on campus. And finally, there is a team meeting remotely to put into place our new educational program, which will begin on March 30th.

In the midst of all this, there is a group of international students who are still on campus working with a few faculty members who were not able to travel home. They have shown caring, courage, and creativity as they enjoy some downtime and make the most of their situation.

As we practice social distancing, we are forced to learn some new skills. Hyde has always been about the concept of community. Simply put, everyone does everything. So much of Hyde life happens during school meetings, performing arts shows, academic presentations, and family weekends. As we have imagined the key components of our new remote learning program, there is one thing we all agreed upon: we need to maintain some sense of community and create some activities that we are all going to commit to – students, parents, faculty, and staff. We are also going to have to reach out to each other through calls, texts, webinars, etc. to continue the support and challenge that is essential to the Hyde education.

The schedule that we are developing includes aspects that we will all be involved in:

• Everyone will commit to their work – the students will have academic work and the parents will be facing their own new work schedules.
• Everyone will be on one Wolfpack athletic team – We will be running, walking or engaging in exercises if we are limited in getting outside. (more details to come)
• We will read – We will start with fiction and nonfiction options.
• Students will begin with one of the following: Educated by Tara Westover — Both a coming of age memoir and a portrait of resilience, courage and the power of education OR Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens–a mystery, a celebration of the natural world, and the story of a young woman’s commitment to being herself and to fighting for her passions.
• Parents, Faculty, and Staff will begin with one of the following: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell–an incredible novel that plays on the theme of isolation (in this case in 18th- and early 19th-century Japan) and tells a story about the courage of commitment and the meaning of truth. It is one of the best novels of recent years OR The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. The title speaks for itself!
• We will learn from each other – There will be weekly webinars on college counseling, family education, the senior evaluation process, making healthy choices, and more.
• There will be human voice contact – Once a week, each family will have a phone check-in with their Discovery Group leader, as well as having other opportunities for individual calls for academics, family support and mentoring.
• We will share our learning! – Using the hashtag #wearehyde we will share our photos, messages, and inspiration to encourage and support each other.

The challenge before us will continue to test us. We can do this, for our families have already embraced a character approach. Know that our team, both here and remote, will go to the ends of the Earth to help you and your child, not just to endure this period, but also to embrace the opportunities that we may not be able to envision at this moment. As Helen Keller said, “When one door closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us”.

While the Hyde schedule template (linked below) is still in development, I thought it would be helpful for all of us to start to envision what lies directly ahead. Next week, our faculty team will be preparing for remote lessons in all of Hyde’s subject areas. You can always look for updates on the Hyde website, but soon as we know if there might be a potential return date, we will communicate that to our families. In the meantime, we must prepare for the reality that a return date this year may not happen. Whatever we face in the coming weeks and months, we will face together. Stay safe, follow health guidelines, and I know that we will take care of each other.

Onward,

Laura D. Gauld ’76
President & Head of School

March 13, 2020

---

COVID-19 Update