The St. Anne’s-Belfield School Quest program is a unique time in our week where students are in the driver’s seat of the learning. In this electives-based program, faculty facilitate groups as students learn and practice how to learn, how to lead, and how to serve.

Quests are student driven in both choice and content. Students can choose to participate in and/or lead a Quest that is project based, problem based, product driven, skill specific, service oriented, or one that evolves with them. With new course options each trimester, students have the opportunity to explore multiple topics outside of the traditional curriculum or follow one project through three courses with each building upon the last.

Sample Quests include:

• What will you invent? (STEM projects)
• Can sharing change the world? (photography and self-reflection)
• What goes into making a captivating podcast?
• What’s your business? An entrepreneurship quest
• Whodunnit? (improvisational theatre work)
• How do we build a community through murals and artwork?
• How do we create a library intern program?
• What’s the news?
• How do we turn fiction into film?

Our programs and curriculum align with the newest science on the middle school mind. We reflect the unique needs of middle schoolers, namely that teaching and learning create space for curiosity and discovery. Students are charged with creating artifacts that demonstrate their learning rather than filling in blanks or regurgitating information. Finally, our academic spaces in the Middle School are highly relational, which is a developmental necessity of the age.

Every student in the Middle School is assigned to an advisory group led by a teacher who serves as that student’s adult advocate and also a liaison between the School and parents/guardians.

Our advisory program anchors student learning in a strong relationship with an adult. It prioritizes time and space for the development of key life skills and habits. Everything from typing, organization, and time management — to digital citizenship and reflection and goal-setting. The smaller teacher to student ratios provide a setting where students can feel free to voice their questions and curiosities. All topics are revisited throughout the Middle School years in different and developmentally appropriate ways. For our Grade 8 students, there is also a special emphasis on community leadership.

The teacher is an advocate for their advisees, oversees their academic progress, and meets with their parents at scheduled parent-teacher conferences during the year. Advisors collaborate regularly with the Dean of Students and the Head of the Middle School, in addition to the School Counselor and the Academic and Learning Support Specialist. 

Identity building is the central work of this age, and our students have opportunities to explore the topics and interests that matter to them. Some examples include:

• Our Quest program is an intentional part of our curriculum in which students lead and collaboratively guide the learning.
• MS interscholastic athletics are another space where this work happens, which actually begins in our 5/6 PE intramural program.
• Projects built on choice and voice abound in core classes.
• Students engage in full year art classes that focus on interdisciplinary creative work based on students’ passions and goals.

Impact Block is a four-year scaffolded experience focused on building the skills that support academic independence and engagement beyond the middle school years. Four days per week for 30 – 45 minutes each day, Grades 5 – 8 students engage in academic skill-building and choice-based experiences designed to help them articulate the support they need, identify and implement the strategies that work best for them, and extend learning beyond the classroom in areas that excite, empower, connect, and engage.

As young people begin to develop their own identities and assert their independence, they often present themselves differently at home than they do at school. This is a normal part of figuring out who they want to be in the world and how they want to relate to their peers, teachers, and parents. Thus, the family-school partnership shifts in middle school. Honest communication between home and school is essential to supporting young people through this process.

Every school has its own communication strategies and culture, and we at St. Anne’s-Belfield work to make ours explicit to families through Parent/Guardian Partnership Meetings at the start of school, new family orientation, monthly Meet in the Middle parent/guardian gatheringss, communication from your students’ advisors, weekly bulletin emails, and more. When we (parents/guardians and educators) talk openly about our expectations for communication, we build a foundation that supports honest dialogue and builds trust. We want all of our families to experience belonging in their interactions with the School as our partnership is essential to each student’s growth and learning.