This week’s Scoop may be hitting your inbox at about the same time our intrepid middle schoolers return to campus from their start-of-the-year orientation/team-building trips, so apologies if you find yourself reading this in a congested carline.
This week, sixth grade students and faculty left campus for a three-day experience at Cathleen Stone Island (formerly Thompson Island) Outward Bound while seventh graders went to The Leadership School at Kieve/Wavus in Maine. Eighth grade students and faculty spent a day at Project Adventure. These experiences are simultaneously an exercise in team and trust building within a community and an exercise in independence, choice, and individualized freedom. In his book Homesick and Happy, Michael Thompson writes, “Every child has to practice being independent, and every parent has to practice letting their child be independent.” With the fundamental pillars of freedom, choice, and independence to guide our middle school philosophy, starting with trips that put those principles in action feels like a great foundation from which these grades can build for the year.
These trips are more than a stand-alone, start-to-the-year type of experience. As part of our sequenced curriculum, these experiences are an extension of the field labs throughout a student’s years at Belmont Day. Starting in pre-kindergarten with a joyous trip to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, each year features a developmentally appropriate opportunity to step off Belmont Day’s campus and experience the world outside our walls.
Trips to Belmont Center to visit the post office (first grade) or to meet with town officials (third) give way to farther-reaching endeavors to Gaining Ground (second) or Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (fourth). The beloved Farm School in Athol hosts our fifth graders for their first school overnight outing and helps build confidence and excitement for their middle school trips.
The ‘crown jewel’ of them all—the eighth grade trip to the American Southwest—occurs soon after Capstone presentations are complete in the spring. Adventure and awe abound as our oldest students learn the history and experience the ecology of a region much different from home. It is a learning experience that engages and challenges both mind and spirit as they reflect on the power of independence, freedom, responsibility, and choice before heading to high school.
Opportunities to step away from campus, down the hill, or across the country are invaluable in developing a child’s sense of self. Taking guided risks moves students into the zone of proximal development and heightens their learning experience. That’s why, as adults, we often remember our elementary school trips—Bronx Zoo in sixth grade is seared in my memory—more vividly than any particular math or reading class. That’s no knock to math or reading lessons; it’s just the brain science of how powerful these field labs and trips can be for our students.
Have a great weekend, everyone! I can’t wait to hear the stories from our middle school students on Monday!
