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Medfield adopts Wayfinder K–12 social‑emotional curriculum; elementary training complete, secondary training planned for October
Summary
The school committee heard administration plans to implement Wayfinder districtwide as a spiraled K–12 SEL curriculum. Administrators described plug‑and‑play lesson sets, online supplemental activities and an evaluation approach combining teacher feedback and qualitative measures; secondary staff training is scheduled for October.
The Medfield School Committee received a presentation on adopting Wayfinder as the districtwide social‑emotional learning (SEL) curriculum for preK–12.
"We wanted a program that teachers could plug and play," said Dr. Marson, who described a curriculum that spirals across grade levels and provides downloadable lessons, slide decks and more than 2,000 supplemental activities. He said the elementary teacher training was completed in August and that secondary staff will be trained in October.
Administrators said Wayfinder starts from a "future-ready" framework emphasizing self-awareness, adaptability, empathy, collaboration and agency. At the elementary level the program will be scheduled roughly once a week or every couple of weeks for a 30–35 minute lesson; at the secondary level the program will be integrated into advisory periods.
On evaluation, the administration said Wayfinder vendors can point to third‑party studies and that the district will use primarily qualitative measures (student/teacher surveys, observations) and selected quantitative indicators such as attendance and suspension rates to assess impact. "We'll have to do an assessment of it too to kind of see where we're at," the administration said, and committed to a midyear report to the committee.
The committee discussed parent materials and optional workbooks; administrators said they purchased online components and will consider printed workbooks after an initial pilot year.
Ending: The administration will proceed with scheduled trainings and return midyear with implementation feedback and assessment findings.
