List of 9 items.

• Advisory Program

  Faculty advisors establish a working relationship with student advisees, providing each student with an adult advocate. The advisor is the primary link between home and school, with regular communication to parents/guardians, including comments in interim and semester reports concerning the growth and progress of the student. The advisor is also responsible for knowing the “big picture” about their advisees’ academic and personal development, consulting with other teachers as needed, and tracking approaches that are more or less helpful in encouraging student success.

• Activities

  Sponsored by middle school faculty, the Middle School Activities Program is an opportunity for students to participate in fun and differently paced experiences during the academic cycle. Students sign up for an activity twice in the school year. Activities meet every other week for 45 minutes. Some activities include dice baseball, cricket, Origami, dramatic improvisation, low impact camping, surfing the Internet, Latin American dancing, mind teasers, indoor soccer, chess, kickball, S.P.O.R.T.S. talk, cake and cookie decorating, and international cooking.

• Collection

  Collection, a regularly scheduled assembly of the entire middle school student-body and faculty, is an opportunity for shared community experiences. Typically, these include presentations and performances by students, faculty, and visiting artists and speakers.  

• Meeting for Worship

  At the heart of Friends School is the Meeting for Worship. Friends (Quakers) worship as a group. In the middle school this may take the form of an entire division (6th-8th grades); mixed-small groups of 10-15 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students; advisory group; or a whole grade-level. Students and faculty gather in “attentive” or “expectant” silence. Anyone who feels moved to do so may stand and speak briefly. The school tries to help students find ways of using silent meditation effectively for worship. Reflection on inward leadings and shared messages gives students and adults, informed by their own religious identity and values, a meaningful opportunity for moral-intellectual growth.

• Meeting for Business

  The business meeting clerk, agenda clerk, and recording clerk (all students selected by their peers) set an agenda for the monthly business meeting. The business meeting follows the Quaker method of decision making through consensus. Significant, student-initiated changes have been made to middle school life and operations through student-led initiatives in committees (see below) and business meeting.

• Service Learning

  The Middle School Service Learning Program is an important aspect of our students’ growth and maturation, and it is integrally linked to curriculum covered in both academic courses and advisory. Students in all three grades engage in service learning projects throughout the course of the school year. Service learning reinforces the idea, importance, and practice of reaching out and caring for others, an aspect of education and citizenship that is nurtured in the lower school at Friends and that continues through the upper school’s service requirement. Our hope is that students will gain a broader understanding of their individual roles in society by helping to improve the quality of life of others in their local and/or global community.

• Clubs

  Middle school students are invited to propose and organize clubs based upon shared interests. Clubs require a faculty sponsor and typically meet during middle school lunch. Examples include Drama Club and One Direction Club, among many others.

• Committees

  In our middle school, students are directly involved in community decision making. Students organize and run committees that seek to improve the quality of middle school life. Faculty members sponsor each committee, but they are not decision makers; they are simply guiding members. Individual students are selected by the Quaker process of consensus for leadership roles and then attend leadership workshops to develop facilitation and group-management skills. All committee plans and decisions are arrived at through consensus as well. While this process is often not a quick means to decisions, it values and, indeed, requires all voices.

• Mastery Program

  The mastery program in middle school is a semester or year-long, student-initiated and student-produced project designed to develop that student’s talents, interests, and skills. The emphasis is on achievement and completing a finished product that is either presented or displayed publicly in a polished, masterful way. Mastery projects may include academic research papers, visual and performing arts projects or performances, special teaching units, and physical projects.