Berkley Normal Middle School .::. What is a Middle School?

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What is a Middle School?

Every day 680 rapidly changing 10 – 14 year olds enrolled at Berkley Normal Middle School are making critical and complex life choices. They are forming attitudes, values and habits of life that will largely direct their behaviour as adults. Our middle school is therefore here to enhance the healthy growth of our young adolescents as lifetime learners who are increasingly competent, self-sufficient young people, optimistic about their future.

Being a relatively new concept, people ask what is a middle school? In its simplest terms it can be described as a school specifically designed to serve youth in transition between childhood and full adolescence.

Unique features of this age group are:

That more growth occurs between these years than any other time in school life. Extensive physical, social, emotional and intellectual growth are on-going during these years.

Young, emerging adolescents prioritise their social and physical development.

While all students move through the puberty cycle and experience a growth spurt, they do so at greatly varying times and speed. We group them together therefore not because they are alike, a homogeneous group, but because they are not alike. Our middle school exists to serve diversity not commonality.

No other age-level is of more enduring importance, because the determinants of one’s behaviour as an adult – self concept, learning interests and values, are largely formed in this period of their lives. This is a challenge we claim Berkley responds to in the “caring, sharing and daring” way.

The academic needs of our students are intrinsically connected to their physical, social and emotional needs. These important attributes are at the centre of the way in which our school is organised and functions.