Middle School Student Life

Tamara Schurdak,
Middle School Principal

In the Middle School, we celebrate the myriad of interests that students have between the ages of 11 and 14. Close student and teacher interactions are at the heart of our program, as well as providing opportunities for students to connect with each other. In addition to a robust academic curriculum, we balance our time and energy with the arts, athletics and various community activities. Our division is bustling with activity on a daily basis. READ MORE

Sixth Grade Geography

• Sixth grade geography students engaged in a project involving a fictional travel agency named “Five Star Global Adventures” (FSGA), which offers trips to various landforms around the world. Their assignment was to pretend they worked for FSGA and were asked by their boss to create a presentation on a landform; the boss’s intention was to include it among other new offerings to customers. The students’ research was based primarily on the five themes of geography: location (absolute and relative), place (human and physical characteristics), movement (goods, ideas and people), human-environmental interactions (how people adapt, change and depend on the environment) and region. They each created an edible version of the landform to share with their classmates on the day of their presentation. Students’ projects included the Galapagos Islands, the Badlands of South Dakota and the Gulf of Mexico.

Into the Woods: Middle School Musical

• On March 13 and 14, the Middle School students performed Into the Woods, an abridged version of the Tony Award-winning musical that was specifically adapted for young performers. The plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales are entwined and further developed to explore the consequences of the characters’ wishes. The main characters are taken from the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Cinderella and other fairy tales. Those familiar characters are part of an original story involving a baker and his wife and their quest to begin a family, as they journey ‘into the woods’ to lift a witch’s curse. The show covers multiple themes: growing up, parents and children, accepting responsibility, morality and wish fulfillment and its consequences.