Middle School Year In Review

THE MIDDLE SCHOOL: A YEAR IN REVIEW

By Pen Vineyard How would I sum up the middle school’s year? Simply put, it was a lot of fun. Our expectations of boys are high at BL, and our faculty did their characteristically excellent work this year eliciting boys’ academic and personal excellence in our joyful, warm culture.

Speaking of faculty, last year the middle school welcomed several new teachers to our ranks: Henry Melcher (seventh grade history), Dina Kutnik (art), Mark von Heeringen (Spanish), and Greg Pyke ’12 (seventh grade science). These teachers quickly embraced our School’s mission of fostering enduring personal relationships, endearing themselves to colleagues and boys alike.

Our faculty facilitated the return of many beloved programs and traditions. Boys built model cars, animated films, jammed on guitars, programmed robots, baked desserts, and undertook many other novel experiences in our signature Innovation program. Our athletic teams resumed competition, posting strong results across seasons and sports. We held our annual holiday and end-of-year concerts, and the middle school theater production—The Wind in the Willows—was a rousing success. We brought back traditional field trips such as the sixth grade engineering day with Garrison Forest School, seventh grade camping trip, and eighth grade exploration of Washington D.C. I particularly enjoyed the revival of the ski club, through which we took a large number of boys to Liberty Mountain on winter Fridays.

Our boys also enjoyed frequent interaction with their younger and older BL brothers. It was heartwarming to see lower and middle school boys regularly eating lunch together. Similarly, it was great to bring all of our boys together for numerous full-school assemblies celebrating Patriot Day, Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and for our Opening and Closing Convocations.

Most significantly, we brought all of the boys together for the culmination of the year—our traditional Closing Exercises, followed immediately by Bridge Crossing. Sixty fine young men concluded their middle school careers. We are proud of their legacy and eager to see all that they accomplish across the bridge. By the time you are reading this, we will have welcomed a large crop of sixty five boys to the eighth grade. They’ll be the beneficiaries of new programs focused on public speaking and leadership, and high performing boys will be able to stretch themselves through a new honors seminar. And just like the year before, they will have a lot of fun along the way.