LWGMS Viewbook

An L-Dub girl is strong in mind, body, and voice.

At LWGMS, every leader is a girl. It’s always a girl who answers the question in class.

Girls speak up and stand up for themselves and others. At L-dub, girls always take center stage.

Lake Washington Girls Middle School is an independent school for girls in grades six through eight, located in central Seattle.

We provide a challenging academic program that educates the whole girl: intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

Could you be an L-Dub girl?

philosophy

An L-Dub girl LEARNS about the world around her.

Our school is an exciting learning community where girls explore and engage with the world around them. Our small school size enables our staff, students, and families to form strong personal connections. LWGMS teachers are passionate about their disciplines and about the joys of teaching middle school girls.

Our families are integral to the school; they enrich and support the curriculum. We encourage parents and guardians to be involved in the school in any way that their interests and skills can benefit the school community.

We believe and practice that a diverse school community is essential to learning. At LWGMS, students and staff from different racial, ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds and family configurations learn from and with each other. LWGMS students develop a positive regard for differences and they learn to be active citizens who use their voices to make a difference. The thoughts and ideas of the girls and their families are essential to the learning experience at LWGMS; the voices of all members of our community are valued.

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mission

An L-Dub girl LOOKS at challenges with confidence.

The mission of Lake Washington Girls Middle School is to prepare girls to be confident young women, strong in mind, body, and voice. We value diversity and promote personal and social responsibility. Students, teachers, and families are active partners in creating a challenging academic environment, fostering independent thinking, and instilling a lifelong love of learning.

Memorizing facts is far less meaningful than knowing how to learn, thinking critically, creating, communicating effectively, and being confident in one’s own abilities. LWGMS provides an education that promotes experiential learning, social justice, self-confidence, and strong academics.

We believe that it is important for girls to know what they want to say and to have the confidence to say it. Every element of the LWGMS experience – from martial arts to mock trial, drama to rigorous academics – challenges our girls to be confident, independent thinkers who work to effect positive change.

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Girls-Only Education

An L-Dub girl LIFTS her voice.

At a time when personal and social issues can present difficult challenges, adolescent girls thrive in an environment that is caring and respectful, an atmosphere in which they are nurtured yet empowered. Lake Washington Girls Middle School provides just that; our graduates leave school academically strong, self-assured, and articulate.

A key study of single gender education shows that the “girls school environment affirms and encourages young women in their capacities as confident individuals, leaders, and agents of social change”.* Research shows that girls-only education is “not merely a matter of separating girls and boys. It’s about making sure girls take center stage, while drawing upon all that we know about the way they grow and learn. It’s not just the classroom. It’s the combination of the community, the culture, and the climate girls schools offer that makes all-girl education such a powerful and transformative experience.”** The experience of a girls-only education means that at LWGMS, girls always take center stage as leaders, performers, activists and scholars. At Lake Washington Girls Middle School, every opportunity is for every girl. * ”Why Girls Schools? The Difference in Girl-Centered Education,” Fordham Urban Law Journal, volume XXIX, 2001. ** The Benefits of Attending a Girls’ School: What the Research Shows,” The National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, 2008.

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Academics

An L-Dub girl Loves learning.

At LWGMS, girls engage in an academically challenging and engaging curriculum, including extensive research and writing, regular debates and oral presentations, individualized and collaborative math instruction, and real-world, experiential science.

With our unique, creative curriculum that is integrated across disciplines, LWGMS prepares girls to critically assess their environments and events, to excel academically, and to exercise their voices. Our students graduate as confident, socially responsible, creative young women who are well prepared for high school and beyond.

.� “What we learn is all connected, like in the real world - Shannon, LWGMS student

Academics

By the end of middle school, an LWGMS graduate will be able to • View the world through multiple perspectives

• Use technology effectively

• Recognize instances of social injustice

• Write plays, narratives, and poetry

• Act as a responsible citizen who serves her community • Speak and debate effectively • Perform on stage in front of hundreds • Converse and write in Spanish • Apply the scientific process • Use math to solve complicated problems • Create, research, and carry out a science investigation • Write an MLA-style documented research paper

• Take useful notes • Express herself through visual arts • Share her opinions with confidence • Know her own learning style • Act as a mediator and work through conflict • Embrace individuality and learn from differences • Collaborate well with peers and adults • Enter high school well prepared for even the most challenging classes

academics

An L-Dub girl Looks at the world with multiple perspectives.

Throughout the curriculum, an LWGMS student’s confidence grows as she reads and analyzes literature and poetry, becomes fluent in a wide variety of cultures through her humanities and Spanish classes, becomes inspired by science and math, develops her creativity through art and drama, and explores her own learning style. Students integrate academic challenges with their skills and interests through choosing to participate in a variety of elective classes, including student magazine, engineering, photography, and mock trial.

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student life

An L-Dub girl is LINKED to her community.

LWGMS students have many opportunities for leadership, collaboration with peers, exploring their interests, providing service to their community, and being part of a team.

Clubs and Community Meetings Because service and interest clubs are an important part of the student experience, meetings happen during the school day.

Students meet weekly with their mixedgrade Respect & Responsibility groups and participate in student-led class meetings.

Experiential Learning Students learn first-hand in real world experiences with local experts, fieldwork, and service projects.

Trips include a three-day excursion to Eastern Washington as part of a

study of Latinos and Native Americans in Washington State, a trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a threeday geology trip, a rites of passage journey, and numerous excursions to performances, museums, galleries, and outdoor education experiences.

Sports and After School Programs We believe that participation in sports helps to develop strong, self-confident, well-balanced young women. LWGMS fields four no-cut team sports: volleyball, soccer, basketball, and tennis. Over 85% of students participate in our school sports teams.

In addition to a daily Homework Club, LWGMS offers several after-school programs, including swimming class, dance, film-making, and drama.

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Strong in Mind

Social Justice

An L-Dub girl Learns to change the world.

The focus on social justice and performance and public speaking allows LWGMS students to use their strong voices and recognize their own abilities to improve their communities.

Every LWGMS student can expect to perform, present, debate, and speak in front of her classmates and larger public audiences every year. Every student participates and cheers on her classmates as they do the same. Through activities such as meeting with their representatives in state government or spearheading sustainability projects for their school and local community, girls at LWGMS become confident young women who know that each of them has the power to implement change in the world.

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- Naomi, LWGMS student

An L-Dub girl Lends a hand.

Lifelong Friendships One of the great strengths of the LWGMS experience is the connection girls make with their classmates. Because classes are small, students learn to work together. Girls whose paths may never have crossed at a larger school become close friends.

Respect and Responsiblity Every student at LWGMS is a member of a Respect and Responsibility (R&R) mixedgrade group that focuses on making the school a place students want to be. R&R group members talk with each other about social issues, carry out service projects together, support each other, and eat lunch together once a week. Every sixth grader has a big sister in her R&R group who can mentor her on everything from organizing her locker to dealing with conflict.

A Sense of Community Students at LWGMS know that their school is really theirs and they learn what it means to be part of a community. They clean the building, participate in weekly class and all-school meetings, publish their own magazine, and run their own parent-teacher conferences.

From the first new-student welcome celebration to graduation and beyond, an L-dub girl knows that she has a sisterhood of peers and a community that cares about her.

Strong in Mind

community

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press LWGMS was also recently featured in these news media: • Students interviewed on King 5 News about their 2008 Election Day “Get Out the Vote” campaign • Seattle Metropolitan’s December 2007 issue “In the Vanguard: Five schools that are changing education”

All-girl Middle School Nurtures Sisterhood When It Really Counts

By CECELIA GOODNOW

P-I REPORTER

But sisterhood can be powerful. Instead of cliques and mean girls, Pliny found a nurturing community of spirited girls who had one another’s back.

“As time went on,” Pliny said in a graduationnight speech last week, “I found out that the people in our class would always accept me for being me.”

Keeping girls strong and self-confident -- that was the dream 10 years ago when six families created Lake Washington Girls Middle School, the state’s first secular, all-girl middle school.

• October 19, 2007 issue of the Seattle P.I. titled “Pioneering School for Girls is All Grown Up”

Middle school is often a walk in the wilderness -- a time of shifting allegiances, unsettling body changes, intellectual leaps and uncertain selfimage. Who am I? Who will I become?

Pliny Stevens can look back and see the distance she has traveled since her first, jittery days at Lake Washington Girls Middle School.

As a raw, sixth-grade recruit, she worried that the academics would be too hard, that she’d have only one friend, that other girls would scrutinize her every move, that they’d form a secret “we hate Pliny” group.

“I didn’t have much confidence in who I was,” she said, “or who I wanted to be.”

© Seattle P.I. June 17, 2008

This year the school grew to 52 students, including a graduating class of 16 eighthgraders -- all of whom were invited to speak at commencement and reflect on their experiences.

“The middle school years can be difficult, especially for girls,” said Patricia Hearn, head of school.

“So often, girls who had been outgoing and confident begin to raise their hands less often, they don’t run for the ball in gym class or they show some other signs of losing confidence.

That is why this school exists: to make sure that doesn’t happen to our girls.”

Other schools, including Seattle Girls’ School and Bellevue’s Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, are trying to address these issues as well.

But it happened to be Lake Washington Girls

Middle School that Seattle P-I photographer Meryl Schenker visited last fall for an assignment.

She sensed something special.

Intrigued by the positive vibe and the exuberance of the students, Schenker returned throughout the school year to chronicle their heartfelt journey from feisty little girls to focused young women.

“I was just totally wowed by this place,” Schenker said. “It is so different than any school I have visited in my 12 years at the P-I and so different than my school experience.”

Schenker’s photos convey a tiny slice of what she encountered over the months.

“People always say that middle school doesn’t matter and you won’t even remember the friends that you had,” eighth-grader Tessa Tweet said, “but I think our school is different. At our school, you don’t make middle school friends -- you make friends for life.”

“As time went on,” Pliny said in a graduation-night speech last week, “I found out that the people in our class would always accept me for being me.”

Awards

Jacob Friedman Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center 2009 2008 2007 2006

1st, 2nd, 3rd place art; 1st, 2nd place writing 1st place writing; 3rd place art 1st and 2nd place writing 2nd and 3rd place writing

King County Civil Rights Commission Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Essay Contest 2009 1st place 2008 1st and 3rd place 2006 1st and 2nd place

Washington State Science Fair Judge’s Choice Award 2006 1st and 2nd place

Rainier Valley’s & ACT Theater’s Young Playwrights Programs 2004 – 2009 | 23 student plays selected

Two students and teacher invited to speak at Holocaust Survivors’ Luncheon Student selected for 2nd place in a worldwide Teachers Against Prejudice Essay Contest Student named City of Seattle Mayor’s Scholar Award Student selected to join the Physician Scientist Training Program at Temple University Three students and teacher invited to speak at Holocaust Survivors’ Luncheon Teacher selected by the Center for Women and Democracy to participate in a delegation to Chile 2006 Teacher recognized by Teaching for Tolerance 2005 LWGMS recognized by the Northwest Girls Coalition with “Community Education Award” 2005 - 2007 Twelve students in Story Slam finals for writing and art 2009 2008 2008 2008 2007 2007

Alumnae

An L-Dub girl LEADS the way.

LWGMS graduates have been accepted to the following high schools: Aviation HS Ballard HS Bishop Blanchet HS The Center School Colégio Imaculada Conceicaõ (Brazil) Eastside Catholic Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart

Franklin HS Garfield HS Holy Names Academy Ingraham HS International School of Milan Kennedy HS Lakeside School Nathan Hale HS Northwest School

Nova School Phillips Academy, Andover Roosevelt HS Seattle Academy Seattle Prep Shorecrest HS University Prep Vashon Island HS

LWGMS graduates have been accepted to many colleges and universities, including the following:

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Bard College Colgate University Cornish Institute for the Arts Emory University Evergreen State College Loyola Marymount Lewis and Clark College Mills College Oberlin College Occidental College Oregon State University Pratt Institute of Design

Pitzer College Pomona College Reed College Scripps College Seattle University Stanford University UC Berkeley UCLA University of British Columbia UC Santa Cruz University of Montana University of Oregon

University of Puget Sound University of San Francisco University of San Diego University of Toronto University of Washington Washington State University Washington University Western Washington University Whittier College Whitman College Willamette University

Admissions

An L-Dub girl could be you!

How will you know if Lake Washington Girls Middle School is the right school for you?

Experience the school on a half-day visit, attend one of our open houses, and talk to students, parents, alumnae, and staff. There is no typical LWGMS student -- a good candidate is any girl who loves learning, whose growth we can foster, and who can contribute to our school community. It is our goal that the result of the admissions process is a match between a family and LWGMS. We keep our tuition as low as possible (about half of most other Seattle independent schools) in order to make our school accessible to a wide variety of students. We provide need-based financial aid to 25% to 30% of our student body, with awards ranging from about 5% to 95% of tuition.

If you have questions about the admissions process or about financial aid, please contact us. Applications are available on our website at www.lwgms.org or by calling 206.709.3800.

“This year I met a school full of girls who are like the sisters I never had.”

- Elena, LWGMS student

810 18th Avenue Seattle, WA 98122 206.709.3800 www.lwgms.org