Middle School

6th GRADE

6th grade students are at the threshold of a new developmental phase. The children say goodbye to a younger stage of childhood and greet a new paradigm, a decisive moment in their development. Structure and form in the 6th grade curriculum provide much-needed balance for the students’ polarities of feeling (e.g., joy and sorrow, calm and frustration, etc). The order provided in 6th grade addresses the students’ newly emerging sense of self as students begin the journey of forging their own path in life. This requires an adept discerning capacity that will eventually yield a strengthened capacity for thinking. At this time, the students’ evolving capacity for critical thinking is in the initial stages — the dawning intellect can be noted in their insightful answers and ability to truly understand cause and effect.

6TH GRADE CURRICULUM

7th GRADE

In 7th Grade the students’ vibrant feeling life is deeply met with a rich panoramic curriculum that feeds that design to learn. The student’s doubt and resistance towards authority is reflected in the history/ language arts lessions that encompass the concepts of social renaissance and reformation, and a deeper awareness of varying perspectives.

7TH GRADE CURRICULUM

8th GRADE

8th Grade may be summed up as a year of polarities. Virtually everything studied is approached from at least two perspectives. This leads the students to see for themselves that there may be two answers for any one problem, two sides to any one issue and that shades of gray exist throughout history. The emphasis on duality arises as the curriculum tries to meet, nourish, and balance the powerful polarizing forces in the 8th Grader, such as sympathy and antipathy, joy and sorrow, love and hate, good and evil, contradiction and relaxation, etc. Whether lessons are exploring the complexities of history from Reformation to Revolution, or spiraling in from infinite to the tiniest point in Geometry, or plumbing the mysteries of how opposites attract in magnetism, the theme of polarities and balance will be of central importance.

8TH GRADE CURRICULUM