50 YEARS OF THE HUN MIDDLE SCHOOL

SPEND A DAY WITH HUN MIDDLE SCHOOLERS AND YOU’LL NOTICE THEY’RE ALWAYS ON THE MOVE.

Running to the Dining Hall during their break to grab a snack. Scrambling to finish their lunch and get soft serve for the walk back to class. Hurrying to get down to the fields for sports.

But there’s one thing they’re not in a rush to do: Leave campus.

You’re familiar with the term ASAP, but have you heard of ALAP? As in, “As Late As Possible?”

This is just a happy place to be. Kids feel that way, and teachers feel that way,” Middle School Spanish teacher Kahlee Schobert says. “They’re texting their parents, ‘ALAP — Pick me up as late as possible.’ The kids are excited to be here, and they want to stay as late as they can.

Middle School Head Ken Weinstein says that feeling is intentional, and in the fifty years since its founding, cultivating that kind of culture in The Hun Middle School has always been a priority.

“There’s this idea that when adults look at school, we see a place of learning where socializing also takes place, but kids look at school as their clubhouse they’re at all day, and learning happens to take place,” Mr. Weinstein says. “So the learning has to be engaging and fun and social. That culture is created by having teachers who love working with kids this age and who enjoy working as a team.”

Mr. Weinstein joined The Hun School community in 2012. A history of individual mentorship and a feeling of belonging existed, but there wasn’t much actual programming in place to support it. He worked with his team to develop a curriculum that includes making advisory more meaningful, organizing all-faculty reads to stay abreast of the latest brain-based research, and implementing The Hun Way orientation program to connect with students in the first weeks of school.

“From the very beginning, there was a huge feeling of community. Roberta King was the Middle School head and she just loved the kids and the kids loved her, and it was a great environment. We’ve kept a lot of that environment going,” Middle School History Department Chair Joan Nuse says. Mrs. Nuse started at The Hun School in 1987. “Everybody was really supportive when I started, and we did a lot of collaborating amongst classes, and that continues.”

Sally Moses started working as a parttime reading teacher in the Middle School not long after it opened. She

worked with students one-on-one after school, helping them to improve their comprehension. After just a couple of years she moved into a full-time role as an English teacher, but still she regularly stayed after school to offer extra help to her students.

“Extra help has always been a big part of Hun,” Mrs. Moses said recently. “All of us Middle School teachers had kids coming after school. It wasn’t a condition of our employment then; we all just cared a lot about the kids because when you’re in a classroom with so few students, you really get to know each child and what they can do.”

She found innovative ways to inspire learning in her students, and many of the tactics she employed are still used at the School today. She collaborated with other departments whenever she could, she assigned projects that gave her students a choice in topics, and she would bring in outside equipment or technology when she thought it could help her students learn better or just have more fun doing it.

One of her favorite projects was the banned book report; students had to select a book that had been banned, somewhere at some point, and then give a presentation to the class about the book. The class had to guess why the book had been banned.

“I think the thing that helped students the most was knowing there was somebody there who cared about them and could help them,” Mrs. Moses said.

Fifty years on, the faculty in the Middle School still really care about all of the students entrusted to them.

“The more we learn about the intellectual, emotional, and social lives of teenagers, the better we are at our jobs,” Mr. Weinstein says. “One of the things I love about our team is that everybody is a voracious learner and loves to learn more about how we can be better.”

Middle School faculty are constantly passing around articles and books on the latest research, meeting to talk about supporting specific students, and brainstorming creative ways to engage their students.

“Bringing out the excitement in my kids is my favorite thing about teaching,” Mrs. Schobert says. “I like to have fun! I don’t love taking notes, so I look for other ways to stimulate the memory. We play games and have fun; that’s the way I get them excited and make it memorable.”

These days, the Middle School building — which was completely renovated and reopened in 2017 — is outfitted with all of the equipment necessary to make learning as engaging and

exciting as it should be in the twenty-first century.

Math classrooms have desks with whiteboard tops so students can use dry-erase markers on them to solve equations. Classes have TV screens and Smart Boards where teachers can show YouTube clips or students can AirPlay presentations. Tables can be raised so students can stand; desks can be pushed together to allow for Harkness discussions; and every student brings an iPad to school.

“When I first started, there was more lecturing, and obviously that’s not our focus anymore,” Mrs. Nuse says. “This place is different in so many ways, but the same in so many ways. Kids are kids, right? So it’s still that feeling of community, but the building is different and the technology is different.”