Page 23 - Priorities #46 2010-March/April

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Middle school teacher Andrew Daniel is excited about the move. “This will help us feel connected as a community and in charge of our own events. By using the Church Square area as our base, we can plan fun events for them, and make it feel like a more kid-friendly experience.” Eighth grader Brandon Zarringhalam agrees. “Having a middle school area will not only give us an identity, but will let the sixth and seventh graders kind of act how they are. When they’re around high schoolers they try to act more mature but really they kind of just want to run around and have some fun. And I think this area will allow them to just act like themselves.” Will Latta, also in eighth grade, puts it more simply. “It will be nice to have a place where there aren’t six-foot tall people crowding everything around.”
Continuity and Choice
The Vision Team’s second goal—offering a year of French, Spanish, or Japanese to sixth graders—was all about closing a curricular gap. Ambler never understood why Priory didn’t offer language classes for sixth graders. “Most of the time they’ve come from an elementary school studying a language,” she explains. “My proposal was that whatever we offered in 7th and 8th grades should also be offered in 6th.” True to the middle school model, the 6th grade language class will be developmentally appropriate. “It’s really immersing them in the language and getting them interested. It’s playful. It doesn’t have lots of homework. It should be an exposure to the language,” Ambler says.
The third short-term goal articulated by the Vision Team— reorganizing the middle school electives program—is designed to give middle schoolers more freedom of choice, something they clamored for when responding to Ambler’s survey. Currently, students in the middle grades take art, computer science, and drama in a predetermined order, without any variation. In other words, says Ambler, “we tell them what they’re taking.” In the new model, music will be added to the list of electives, and after sampling all four in sixth grade, students will be able to choose which three they’d like to take over their seventh and eighth grade years, and in which order.
Middle school science teacher Lisa Wood is especially excited about giving middle schoolers more choice in their schedules. “It speaks to the individuality of the students and the reality that each student has different interests in these areas.”
Right Person, Right Time
Everyone agrees that Mrs. Ambler is the right person in the right job at the right time. Lisa Wood, who has a decade of middle school experience, applauds Mrs. Ambler’s clear vision, openness to input from the community, and her organizational skills. “It’s such a pleasure workingwithCaitha.She’snotafraidtoshakethingsup. She’sgotten more accomplished in the last six months than any Middle School Dean I have ever worked with!”
Brother Edward says, “Caitha knows and loves middle schoolers. And she has the expertise to articulate very clearly what their needs are. She can be a very loud advocate for them.”
Of her passion for her work, Ambler admits, “I’m always thinking about it. I’ll be running down the road on the weekend and all this stuff is in my mind.” She ticks off some of her ideas for the future: designing more progressive learning spaces, incorporating Lego robotics into the curriculum, establishing a better social and physical health program. “They’re not all great ideas. Some of the ideas I have and then I go, ‘Oh, that’s not going to work.’ But the exciting thing about working at Priory is—you have an idea, and it can happen. You can think about something and wish for it and then work it out! That’s really rare.”
Brother Edward puts it this way. “We always need to keep in mind what is best for the kids. It’s a constant unfolding. It’s constant renewal.” He continues. “Caitha, in the role that she’s playing now, is at a marvelous time in the school’s history. Before, the soil had not been tilled and it would have been like the parable of the seed on the hard ground. The ground is ready now. Now let us do it, and let us move and bring it to the next level.”