Seabury School: Classroom Newsletter

   In my discussions with parents about the opening of Seabury's Middle School, I am often asked to reply to questions surrounding the value of a small middle school program. To answer that, let me first talk briefly about the characteristics of the young adolescent.
   Middle school is a time of many contradictions as well as great opportunity. Adolescents struggle with a growing feeling for greater levels of independence yet yearn for meaningful relationships with the adults in their lives. Children of this age are capable of complex analytic thinking yet may have a tendency to be disorganized. They want to be considered experts in a field yet sometimes find it very difficult to accept advice. Academic work needs to be relevant to their lives or their level of investment and performance drops significantly.
   Gifted adolescents offer even greater challenges as they tend to be fearful of taking intellectual risks, have a heightened level of self consciousness, tend to be perfectionists, and get more heavily invested in the process more than the outcome.
   The value of the small middle school program reflects a school's ability to meet the wide range of needs that are described above.
�        Teachers will have multi-year relationships with students and will therefore know them very well; their academic abilities, their personality traits, the social forces at work, their willingness to take risks, their confidence level, where they need the most amount of support in order to become more independent in their academic pursuits,
�        With this knowledge comes the ability for a teacher to fine tune the curriculum to maintain a high level of appropriately challenging and stimulating set of assignments - a personalized curriculum, if you will.
�        Teachers will have the time to develop a strong partnership with parents where frequent and detailed communication is at the center of this relationship. This partnership is key to achieving the academic goals that are pivotal to the overall academic success of a middle school experience.
�        The curriculum will be rigorous and relevant. Students will understand the need to be well prepared when they go out to conduct an interview of a Tacoma elder while researching a paper on community history, for instance. Learning will not be contained to the walls of the classroom but rather students will be involved in a wide variety of activities that directly relate to the curriculum.

In many ways, these attributes reinforce what Seabury's elementary program has successfully done for years - prepare students for the rigors and challenges of middle school. The value of the small middle school lies in our ability to work with students over the three year period to help them become confident learners, able to advocate for themselves, where they understand their strengths and weaknesses and know how to work hard to achieve success, and have the strength of character to set high standards and goals for themselves.

News from the Classrooms

A Jackie and Tristan Production

   First, everyone was scheduled to get to school at 6:30am! Most people were pretty tired. Then we piled into the cars about to fall asleep, and drove down there. It took about 20 minutes. When we finally got there, we had to wait for 2 people in the cold, harsh parking lot. They arrived a tad bit later, while we goofed around with our friends.
   We rushed over to CI Shenanigans parking lot, where Scott Hanson awaits us. Then we went on the beach and got started. Most of us got tools, like a trowel, or a clipboard with information. We were supposed to find fish eggs. He asked for the person with tape measure and that was Jordan. Jordan went 100 ft across the shore of the Beach. Then he asked the person with the flags, Nathaniel, and told Nathaniel to put a flag every 25 ft. Toby helped Nathaniel and took lots pictures.
     After that, Scott asked for the person with the trowel, Donovan, and he gave it to Scott. Scott started to scoop the sand with the trowel. He told us not to scoop to deep, or to shallow. Then he asked for the person with the plastic bag, Alex, and Scott put the sand in the bag. Then everyone took turns doing it.
     Time passed so fast. We walked 100 ft. before we Looking at Sand Lance