Blazing Trails Once Again: Opening Our Middle School With Our First Cohort of Families

Middle school students engage in a class discussion.

This fall marked the opening of middle school grades at The Primary School for the first time. It was thrilling to watch our class of 6th graders – each of whom began as The Primary School’s first preschool students in 2016 – blazing trails once again.

Opening middle school grades at The Primary School has truly been a team effort – with our partnership with parents squarely at the center of our work. In the 2022-23 school year, we brought a group of parents and educators together to form our Middle School Design team. Engaging parents was vital because we know the shift from elementary to middle school coincides with a significant developmental stage as children enter adolescence. We also collaborated with parents to redesign our parent wellness coaching program to ensure it fit parents’ needs and desires for support with the challenges and opportunities that come along with raising a preteen, such as puberty and mental health. We know that designing around families – and continuing to support both students and their caregivers – would be more important than ever during this transition.

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to include students in the process as well. As part of the design process, the team drew on insights from students and evidence-based middle school models to determine the essential strategies and programs that would be used.

A middle school student participates in class.

Middle School Design Lead and Dean of Upper Elementary, Patrina Aaron explains, “It was important to our community that the soul of The Primary School - our culturally responsive, trauma informed, whole child approach - continued into our middle school. This is why our families have continued through our program since pre-K. We also prioritized parents’ call for a rigorous curriculum, one that would prepare students for high school, college, and beyond, while building in opportunities for student agency and leadership.”

The result has been a 6th grade that is full of new and exciting opportunities for engagement. We’ve created new structures that center student agency and voice - such as having students lead “circles” where they set goals and reflect on their experience alongside their teacher and caregivers. Our 6th graders are also participating in clubs and extracurricular learning activities like volleyball and gardening, and engaging in off-campus experiential learning to help students understand themselves in the context of their community and planet.

Rosa Fesili, a 6th grade parent who served on our Middle School Design team, has been part of The Primary School for five years. She’s excited to see her daughter Kali Rose as a middle school student, and shared that the clubs are especially exciting for her and Kali Rose, as they “allow for students to get to know each other, feel comfortable with each other, and have discussions.”

Tavish Lopez, one of our lead middle school teachers, shares that the collaboration and emphasis on community is one of the reasons he joined The Primary School. As an educator, he strongly believes “learning is a participatory act and is very much a community effort.” He’s excited to work together with families and other teammates to translate what’s been happening in the early grades to our older grades and “make the model even more unique.” In the coming months, Tavish is looking forward to finding a balance in pushing his students to reach their full potential to continue to grow, but also stepping back and giving them space to grow independently.

We are grateful for the support of our entire community for their contributions to this exciting milestone, and look forward to continuing working to make our middle school a place full of joy, development and growth!