Curriculum

Middle School students work on local farms

Academics

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.

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.

Middle School students in a round-table seminar

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.

Montessori two-year cycle for Humanities in Middle School

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.

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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.

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