Bay Montessori’s middle school program serves adolescents from ages 12-14.  Program hours are 9am-3pm, 5 days a week.

Maria Montessori wrote that the adolescent enters a new stage of development around the age of 12.  Recent neurological science shows that the adolescent brain undergoes enormous transformation during this time – students develop new skills in abstract reasoning, social interaction, and personality. 

 

Montessori middle school programs seek to nurture and challenge the whole person through this process, providing support and ambition for the process that Maria Montessori termed the “valorization of character.”

 

Accordingly, the middle school program at Bay Montessori is marked by an increased workload, more responsibility in the school community, and heightened self-reflection.  Students work together as a community to explore challenging ethical questions and to apply creative problem-solving techniques.  The students manage the classroom democratically, learning to compromise and find solutions that benefit everyone in the group.  Compassion and respect are strongly emphasized.

 

The middle school curriculum includes study in English writing and self-expression, pre-algebra and algebra, geometry, social studies, science, personal development and foreign language.  Students create and maintain a small business as an extended study of economics.  They practice writing a personal statement for college entry and discuss classic literature in Socratic seminars.  Additionally, students are required to log at least 16 hours of community service for the year.  The inter- and intrapersonal skills that students acquire in the middle school program enable them to be leaders in their future academic communities.