Middle School

The Passage to Adulthood

When does a child become an adult? Parents and educators know that maturity is not just something that happens; it develops. Adolescence is the training ground for this transformation to adulthood.

Independence and a sense of responsibility are two markers of maturity. Middle School students must constantly exercise their executive skills: juggling multiple assignments; keeping track of due dates; and coordinating efforts in group projects. Students gain independence while doing real tasks such as planning transportation for a trip, calling to make appointments for community service, or writing thank you notes to people who have assisted the community. In the words of one graduate: “Everyone is motivated to learn, and we encourage each other to be self-directed.”

Middle School students in Houston for an outing

Curriculum

Life in the Middle School inspires intellectual curiosity while giving opportunity and instruction to develop executive functioning skills such as creativity, ethics, resilience, curiosity, and time management. The students’ work is practical, hands-on, and real-world—as well as academic.

Overview

The Middle School academic program, grounded in a humanities curriculum and complemented by interdisciplinary studies in math, science, language, and social studies, uses a seminar approach to encourage students’ deepening of their reading and speaking skills as they discuss literature and subject-area texts in small groups. Students concurrently identify real-world interests and entrepreneurial activities; in occupations and micro-economy courses, they plan and implement short and long-term projects over the school year. Students also study Spanish, art, music, and physical fitness. In after-school sports, the Post Oak Bearkats athletes can choose from volleyball, flag football, cross country, track, soccer, and basketball.

The weekly schedule for Middle School students begins to resemble adult life in many respects as students manage their daily responsibilities: attending scheduled lessons; using a planner to structure their time; and prioritizing their work as they strive to meet deadlines and standards of excellence.

Successful candidates for the Middle School demonstrate responsibility, respect, self-direction, curiosity, and community-mindedness.

Themes

Nine themes drive the curriculum: Fundamentals of Human Society; Classical Civilizations; Human Constructs; Peace; Revisiting Fundamentals; Law and Government; Dramatic Change; Globalization and Transnationalism; and 20th and 21st Century. The Post Oak Middle School curriculum is based on Dr. Montessori’s syllabus for the adolescent. The syllabus focuses on three aspects of development: self-expression, intellectual development, and preparation for adult life. All areas of instruction and activity in the Middle School are tied to one of these three aspects of the syllabus. The following diagram provides a key to understanding how individual subjects and activities relate to the syllabus.

Our Middle School curriculum focuses on not only on the academic and physical development of students, but also on developing life skills. These life skills include conflict resolution; problem-solving; community and individual responsibility; healthy life choices; and an understanding about the effects individuals have on the environment and the world.

Montessori two-year cycle for Humanities in Middle School

Service Learning

Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection. This enriches the learning experience, teaches civic responsibility, and strengthens communities (Learn and Serve America National Service Learning Clearinghouse). Middle School students examine current issues affecting our neighborhood and city, then choose to participate in service opportunities that address those issues.

Occupations

The Occupations class connects students with life skills activities that integrate the curriculum with life outside of the school. Students gain more in-depth and applied experience, resulting in enhanced skills, self confidence, and interdependence with the community. This exposure helps identify new interests and cultivate relationships, enhancing the student connection between the classroom and the world. Class activities range from woodworking to gardening, food preparation, sewing, and more.

Arts

Visual arts is practiced at the Glassell School, the teaching branch of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. In visual arts, the students work on growing their creative practice and developing their abstract problem solving skills using various types of media (including painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and more). They also touch on various themes from art history, humanities, and current events.

In Music, students perform, create, and research music. Using boomwhackers, small groups or the entire class can work collaboratively to perform songs. Multiple online resources allow students to create electronic music and compose graphical scores for live boomwhacker performance by their peers. Reading and discussing articles about current events in music gives students the opportunity to investigate the relationship between music and society as a whole. Researching historical topics allows students to explore the impact that technological advancements and extramusical historical events have had on music throughout time. Finally, the weekly song of the day gives students the opportunity to hear and discuss a wide variety of musical styles.

Theater focuses on the fundamentals of the dramatic arts. There is emphasis on staging, physicality, and playwriting, as well as the collaborative creation of plays and scenes.

Field Experiences

Authentic Experiences: Adolescents want to see their role in everything. They are active doers, not passive watchers or listeners.

The Middle School divides its curriculum into units of several weeks in length, each culminating in a group experience in the world outside the classroom.

To cap their study of urban civilizations, students conduct a week-long study of the City of Houston, researching current problems or human achievements through a series of site visits, and then reporting on them to their classmates.
After studying the history and practice of law, students present a mock trial in an actual courtroom downtown.
The study of the fundamental needs of humans culminates in a class trip to the Colorado Plateau region of Arizona to work archeology sites with scientists in the field.
The study of government spurs a week-long trip to Washington, DC, where students meet their representative in Congress, sit in on an oral argument in the Supreme Court, and see the Library of Congress.

Service to the Greater Houston Community

Service in the Post Oak Middle School is not a one-off or occasional activity. Instead, the need and obligation to help others is woven into the fabric of our curriculum. Every week students and staff participate community service projects at different agencies around Houston, as well as serving our younger students at the Bissonnet Campus.

Middle School students participate in a mock trial

The Next Step

Faculty

I would encourage all parents to look beyond the traditional markers of success when making the decision about whether to continue with your child’s Montessori education. What I see in my child, and in so many of her peers, is a child who works because she loves the process, who speaks and persuades others because she has a strong sense of herself and of her values. What grade she gets for her speech is the farthest thing from her mind… and I think that’s pretty great!Jennifer Norten

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