The new Division L curriculum provides its students with heavy doses of languages and mathematics, permitting them to enter advanced courses in Ivy League colleges as freshmen. Students following this path spend three years in one another’s company and keep the same teachers from year to year (a practice that leads to the curriculum being called a sequence).
Following the success of Division L, sequence-based curricula become a school-wide pattern for sophomore through senior years over the next decade. There is a mathematics–natural science sequence (Division M), two sequences in the study of contemporary society (Division S for the college-bound, Division C for others), and Division E, which offers a college-preparatory curriculum and a successor to the short curriculum, now called the general curriculum. Division E focuses on exploration, relaxing the rigidity of the sequence scheme.
As the school shakes up the curriculum, class periods double in length from forty-five to ninety minutes, with classes meeting five times in two weeks. The average class size drops from twenty to fifteen students.
Parents/Guardians: Please join the Parent and Guardian Association (PGA) for dinner in the dining hall at 5:30 p.m. before its final meeting of the school year on Monday, April 17. The meeting will be from 6:30-8:00 p.m. in the MDA Library Conference Room. Those unable to attend in person may join virtually via Zoom.