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In the middle school, from sixth through eighth grade, students develop in the brief space of three years from children to b'nei mitzvah to young adults. Their dizzying growth spurt is well matched, on the one hand, by academic studies that are increasingly rich and complex and, on the other hand, by personal and group support structures that are sturdy, flexible, and identity-affirming.
A Student-Centered Educational Process
The student is at the center of the educational process at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan:
- All learning originates in the student’s prior experiences, understandings, and questions and proceeds outward, linking up with new, challenging experiences.
- All learning is driven by the student’s natural curiosity, by the need to make meaning out of daily experiences in his or her physical and social environment. Observing what happens, the student reflects on it, asks questions, and seeks to formulate answers.
- All learning culminates in the student’s increasing competence to understand what he or she only vaguely understood before, and to do what he or she could almost, but not quite, do before.
Each student is unique in personality, temperament, learning style, background, and interests. While all children go through the same steps of the learning process, they do not do so in the same way or at the same time. One of the teacher’s tasks is to recognize and provide for each student’s individuality, while at the same time maximizing the opportunities students have for social learning from each other.
Each student is a whole person, with mind, heart, spirit, and hands. To educate the whole person, we strive to devise learning experiences that touch on all of these domains. In addition, because the domains are interrelated, we help students make connections across domains and subject-matter disciplines.
A Time Of Transitions
The middle school program in grades six through eight is geared to address the needs of students in the middle: in transition from childhood to adolescence, from thinking concretely to thinking abstractly, from physical immaturity to physical maturity, from judging themselves on the basis of parents’ and teachers’ images of what it means to be a good child to having an independent sense of identity and value. Early adolescence is a time of rapid development and rapid shifts, of alternations between highs and lows, between order and the verge of chaos. It is a time of excitement and pride in new abilities and qualities, and equally a time of distress and worry over being different and limited. It is a time when school plays a critically important role in one’s life.
Small schools and small classes are an ideal environment in which to provide the support and attention that middle school students need. Our middle school program is geared to address the many and complex needs of emerging adolescents in a way that enables them to feel safe, trusting, and confident in themselves. With much personal attention and support, with much warmth and affection, the school affirms each student’s individuality, group membership, and worth, helping each grow intellectually, socially, and Jewishly.
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