Middle School Classes

Acceleration

With the exception of X-Days, students are in a personalized Acceleration class every day. This is dedicated time for students to work one-on-one with teachers, either to address gaps in foundational knowledge and practice core skills, or to enrich learning and pursue individualized study of topics in greater depth. This time is completely personalized to meet the needs of each student.

Advisory

With the exception of X-Days, students gather in Advisory every day for 35 minutes per meeting. The emphasis of this time focuses on academic support coupled with an intentional social-emotional curriculum. Advisory time includes one-on-one meetings with the advisor, self-reflection through journaling, team building exercises, open conversations on topics related to social and emotional development, personal interest projects, goal setting and monitoring, and coordinating best uses for our daily personalized Acceleration classes. 

Creative Arts & Design (CAD)

Our arts program emphasizes visual arts, performing arts, and media arts. Students take up to three different elective courses within the same academic year. Each student will have three hours of Creative Arts & Design Studio (CAD) per week. In addition to having full-time art teachers, we are collaborating with some of the best arts and design organizations throughout Washington, DC to further enhance our program, giving our students unique access to world-class professionals.

Humanities

Identity, Change Makers, and Community are central themes in the minds of young adolescents and are central themes in our Middle School humanities courses. Other humanities themes are inextricably linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals such as Good Health & Well-Being, Reduced Inequalities, and Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. Throughout our studies, students are engaged in deep inquiry by examining history, ethics, and geography through a case-study approach of analyzing topics, themes, problems, and issues. The humanities courses are also where students receive more sophisticated reading instruction within a wide variety of genres and strengthen their skills to be highly effective communicators in both written and oral forms.

Language and Culture

Cultural competencies are central to our mission. Middle school students can choose to study Spanish or Chinese. Our program is designed to teach children about world languages and culture, using language as a tool for gaining insight into cultural beliefs and practices as well as for communication. The goal is to enable students to actively and comfortably participate in a world language cultural environment. 

Opportunities for full cultural immersion exist through our Global Rotation Program that will be available for students starting in the eighth grade. Course offerings provide a range of experience and exposure to languages, from novices to heritage speakers. 

MathS

Our mastery-based program develops sophisticated and flexible mathematical thinkers who understand both the power and limitations of mathematics as a tool to describe and make sense of the world. True mathematical sophistication requires creative, critical, and logical thinking. Students in our program tend to go beyond basic skill development and fluency to master computational thinking, mathematical modeling, problem seeking and solving, data analysis and visualization, reasoning and logic, financial literacy, and creative expression through mathematics. 

Above all, they partake in the joy and wonder of using math to create, collaborate, communicate, and think critically about the world around them.  

STEM

The STEM program seeks to cultivate and deepen each student’s innate curiosity about the natural and man-made world. To keep alive the spirit of inquiry, we design learning experiences around open-ended questions and exploration of phenomena. We believe that the purposeful integration of science disciplines, technology, engineering, and mathematics creates the conditions for deep exploration of the world, and that hands-on engagement with the skills and practices of these disciplines is essential for our students.  

Interrogating the world through the concepts and tools of STEM is but one mode of inquiry. Truly authentic and meaningful learning must be interdisciplinary and foster students’ abilities to make connections across many domains of human experience. The investigation of the world by students and teachers must be suffused with joy, rigor, critical thinking, and optimism.

Technology in STEM: Today’s students must be prepared to thrive in a constantly evolving technological landscape. Our academic technology provides students with the digital resources to think critically about the world as it is, and to imagine the world as it could be. Technology provides our students with a platform to pursue their innovative and creative instincts, and the means to collaborate and work together to solve local and global challenges. In addition, new digital tools allow for a more personalized and experiential education that utilizes students’ diverse learning styles and curiosities. We encourage students to consider the responsibilities and obligations of the use of technology globally, and the notion of “digital citizenship.” Our students develop a set of social, emotional, and cognitive abilities to achieve a healthy balance to the demands of digital life.