Signature Programs
Middle School is a world of variety and vitality, and our program immerses students in grades 6-8 in a stimulating and challenging intellectual environment. At GFS, every student can find a place to shine.
Signature Skills Program
Grade 6
Intentional and measurable instruction focusing on academic, organizational, and social emotional skills.
Goals
- Learn how to be a student
- Build a foundation for Middle School and beyond
- Gain confidence in academic, organizational, and social-emotional skills
Service and Community Engagement
Grade 7
A full-year exploration of service learning that includes students navigating curricula modules that focus on food insecurity, homelessness, and environmental stewardship.
Goals
- Ignite the natural and necessary extension of our Quaker ethos
- Harness the energy and curiosity of seventh graders
- Capitalize on students’ desires to be active citizens capable of changing their world
- Inculcate in our students the importance of mutual learning and abandoning the notion of service learning as operating from a deficit model
Capstone Project
Grade 8
Guided by a single question, students explore passion projects that allow them to position learning in ways which are authentic to themselves.
Goals
- Offer a new element of student choice
- Give students a positive and self-directed way to embrace learning through doing
- Create a place where all students can share something that matters to them
- Open students’ hearts and minds to myriad opportunities for curiosity and avenues to success
Middle School MINI-COURSES
Week-long interdisciplinary deep dives center joy, curiosity, and rigor as students experience uninterrupted learning around a single topic. Teachers partner to design mixed-grade courses and students choose from a menu of options.
Theatre Play or Musical
As part of a year-long Theatre Movement Arts program, the winter features a Middle School play or musical with participants across grades.