Stories

I was a middle school head at two different PreK-12 schools early in my career and learned an important lesson: middle school is a rite of passage, one noble in its essence and critical to healthy human development. When I became a PreK-8 head of school, I learned another important lesson: middle school in a PreK-8 school is entirely different from one in a PreK-12 school and is better suited to give students three essential experiences they need to develop and thrive.

The first is a setting that fully appreciates the middle school student and experience. While middle schoolers are stretching toward young adulthood, they are, in most respects, still children, and they need a setting that carefully balances their independence and autonomy and is infused with support, love, and guidance. When students know and feel that school provides an emotional, psychological, and intellectual home base that nurtures their unique development as people and students, they thrive. And when they are the oldest students in a school, as they are at Prep, they mature without the shadows cast by high school students, which is a very good outcome.

The second is a challenging program that stretches them as students and people. It is not enough to be a school that is warm and nurturing, as important as these qualities are. An excellent independent school like ours needs to offer students genuinely challenging experiences. The key is to stretch students and not stress them. Stressed students become fragile and burned out; they are not fully capable of true learning and growth. Students who are thoughtfully stretched meet the high expectations placed before them. A great school needs to be both nurturing and challenging, not one or the other.

And the third is the opportunity to be leaders. We like to say students in our school can be children a little longer and leaders a little sooner. Isn’t this a wonderful outcome? And it can only fully happen in a school exclusively devoted to children, as ours is. Leadership in a middle school is not always obvious. Yes, it can mean being a student council or club leader. But it can also be more subtle, like when a shy student lands a part in the musical. Or when a 6th grader mentors a younger buddy, or a student who has never played volleyball joins the team and demonstrates grit and determination.

The middle school experience in a PreK-8 school like ours provides students with long-lasting positive outcomes. They become more confident and capable students and people, and we know from experience that Prep graduates thrive in high school and beyond. The best preparation for high school happens right here at Charlotte Prep, and graduates who are in college and beyond point to their time at Prep as essential to their success later in life. This is the power of the middle school at Prep.

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