Educating the Whole Child

Dear Families:

Thank you to those of you who were able to attend The Middle School Awards this past Tuesday evening. The number of students involved in extracurricular activities and the diversity of these activities was inspiring. There is no doubt that these opportunities, which challenge students to think and learn in powerful ways, play an important role in helping us to fulfill our mission of educating the whole child. As with all endeavors, these experiences are not without their own obstacles (being over-matched by an opposing team, struggling to get the harmonies just right, having to adapt materials to meet a robotics challenge). However, when we see our students pushing themselves to do their best for themselves and for the team/group, the opportunities for learning are self-evident. These programs also provide students with the opportunity to “bump” into a new passion or to deepen a commitment to an area of interest and strength. Through our extracurricular programs, students with varied prior experiences and abilities regularly come together under the guidance of experienced teacher leaders to support each other as they work to be their best selves. I hope that this year’s Awards Night sparked some new areas of interest for students and faculty alike. I look forward to future evenings where we are able to come together as a community to celebrate this important work.

Following on the heels of Awards Night, we were treated to a preview of this evening’s Spring Concert by the the Little Red Singers, the Little Red Ensemble and the Middle School Jazz band. Click on the player below for some samples of the vocal and musical offerings that we enjoyed.

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On a related note, I write to you with some exciting news about our plans for the middle school performing arts program. While these changes will primarily impact seventh and eighth grade students, they will also have some important programmatic implications for fifth and sixth grade students. In brief, beginning next year, seventh and eighth graders will take a performing arts elective in lieu of their current twice-a-week general music class and once-a-week drama class. Elective offerings will include instrumental music, vocal music, drama and dance. In addition, we will offer a formal jazz band program for fifth and sixth grade students and a brass and woodwind morning instrumental class for beginners. More specific details follow.

Currently, seventh and eighth graders have a general music class that meets twice a week and a drama class that meets once a week. Both of these are year-long classes. Beginning next year, seventh and eighth graders will have the opportunity to participate in an exciting performing arts elective program in which students will have the chance over the two-year sequence to take instrumental music, vocal music, drama and dance classes. Because we believe that opportunities to explore all four of these areas are important to the artistic development of all students, the program will be structured to provide focused study in at least one of these areas and an introduction to the other three. In addition, seventh and eighth grade students will participate in the elective classes together. We think this is good for the community and for building program continuity (i.e., after the first year, there will be experienced students in some of the electives who can help new students as mentors and to reinforce norms and expectations).

To accomplish this, students will take a year-long major course that will meet twice a week and two semester-long minor courses that will meet once a week. Over the course of the two year sequence students will be expected to take classes in all four performing arts areas through the combination of their major and minor classes. Please note that:

• Instrumental music majors will be expected to have had some prior experience playing a musical instrument and this ensemble will perform as the MS Jazz Band at our annual fall and spring concerts.
• Vocal music majors will study a range of genres and styles, but will not be expected to join the official MS chorus.
• Drama majors will explore the many varied aspects of stagecraft and will be encouraged, but not required to participate in the Middle School play and musical.
• Dance majors will not be expected to have had any prior formal dance training and will be expected to be active participants in all dance and choreography activities.

All seventh and eighth grade students will be expected to participate in a spring MS Arts Celebration evening in their major area. The minor classes will share their work at the end of each semester at our regular Wednesday Middle School meetings.Middle school music teacher Matt McLean will teach the instrumental music class, lower school music teacher Ledell Mulvaney will teach the vocal music classes and middle school drama teacher Joanne Magee will teach the drama classes. We are still in the process of identifying a teacher for the dance program. When we discuss these changes with current sixth and seventh grade students, we will ask them to give us a general sense of their likely first choice for their major class. These choices will not be binding, but will help us in our planning. In the fall, students will learn more about the major choices and will have one or two sessions during which they can make changes so that students end up in major class to which they are fully committed. More detailed course descriptions will be available at the start of the year.

By moving the Jazz Band into the elective period, we will be able to offer an instrumental ensemble program for fifth and sixth graders who already play a musical instrument. This ensemble will meet during our regular Friday Activity Period. Matt will also work with this group during occasional IWP periods and mornings. This ensemble will perform at Middle School meetings and at the Arts Celebration evening. In addition, we will offer a once-a-week morning program for students interested in learning to play brass or woodwind instruments. Families will need to rent or buy an instrument to participate in this program. In instances where this cost might prevent an interested student from participating, the school will provide an instrument on loan. The Middle School chorus will continue to meet during the school day and will continue to be open to students in grades five through eight. These changes will also provide an opportunity for us to look at the fifth and sixth grade general music program so that we can continue to strengthen its focus on community singing, musical literacy including composition and performance and integration with the core curriculum.

I hope that you are as excited about these changes as we are. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Be well,
Mark