Middle School

It's a pleasure to welcome you to the Green Acres Middle School. I’m glad you’ve chosen to learn more about us. Our classes in Grades 5 through 8 are dynamic, challenging, and full of the joy of learning meaningful things; they help students learn and grow in age-appropriate ways.

Middle school offers increasingly sophisticated concepts across subject areas—deep mathematical thinking, challenging literature, scientific experimentation, physical education, and opportunities to engage the world creatively with music and through studio and performing arts. At Green Acres, these serve as the foundation of our program, with teachers and students building on them as they question, debate, experiment, and reflect collaboratively on what they are learning.

For example:

• Our fifth graders learn and memorize state capitals, but also dig deeper for the meaning behind the facts. Why would a state need a capital? Why is Annapolis the capital of Maryland? 
• Sixth graders learn about Haitian poverty through their literature, acquiring knowledge but also sponsoring service projects that can help ameliorate it. 
• Seventh and eighth graders learn to take photographs not only to develop prints, but to “learn to see with a camera”—to understand why people make art and to think about ways great visual art differs from less distinguished efforts. 
• Eighth graders study the economies, governments, educational systems, and freedoms of the world’s countries. They debate issues confronted by the United Nations General Assembly, and learn how difficult it is to resolve the world’s conflicts. 

We expect students to work hard and to think hard. Our program is built around projects that are challenging, collaborative, meaningful, and authentic—to develop the kinds of skills our students will be honing for the rest of their lives.

Our students learn to advocate for themselves, for those around them, and for their beliefs and passions. Green Acres students are empowered as learners to find their voice and to use it. As a result of the very small student-teacher ratio and the excellent, engaging faculty, students learn to seek out the answers to their problems, to ask when they need help, and to understand when they don’t know something in order to figure out their path to learning.

Finally, our students learn to love learning. No skill or predisposition is more integral to success in our fast-changing world. By inspiring students with thought-provoking challenges and by allowing students to explore their passions within the structures of the curriculum, Green Acres helps to inspire the innate curiosity that all kids have.

More than 90% of our students who apply to independent high schools are offered admission at their top-choice high school. While we most certainly prepare students to enter ninth grade, we also prepare them to lead meaningful lives as teenagers and adults. We help them understand themselves, as learners and as people. We guide and encourage students to learn from their mistakes and to resolve conflicts. Our students leave Green Acres full of the confidence they need to take on both the challenges we see today and those we have not yet even imagined.

Please reach out if you have questions about the Middle School or would like more information.

Sincerely,

Peter Klam
Middle School Head