A Meaningful Middle School
Raising the Bar of Success
What is the goal of Middle School?
MWS graduates are young people who can identify their own unique gifts and can competently and thoughtfully bring them to the world.
How do we get there?
MWS is unique in the way it prepares the whole child: Head, Heart, and Hands.
Head - Rigorous Academics
7th graders find the golden mean inside a pentagon and discover the Fibonacci sequence spiraling through a pinecone. At every stage, academic knowledge is built from experience first and abstraction second, so that by the time a student encounters a formula, a rule, or a thesis, she already understands what it means in the real world. In this way, what we cultivate is comprehension — not just the ability to recall information, but the capacity to understand and “own” information from one’s personal felt experience. This is how information turns into insight and can be held for a lifetime.
Heart - Emotional Intelligence
At MWS, we recognize that children are not only thinkers — they are doers, feelers, meaning-makers, and the sacred holders of the future. We believe every student contains multitudes of potential and emotional depth. With this in mind, we cultivate reverence, wonder, and moral imagination as essential human capacities. Reverence is the capacity to pause, reflect, and give value to one’s experience. Wonder is the capacity to be moved. Moral imagination is the capacity to act from something deeper than self-interest.
Hands - Practical Skill-Building
What we cultivate through the hands is will — the capacity to plan something difficult and see it through, to meet resistance with persistence, and to bring an idea from imagination into physical reality. Will is not a personality trait; it is a practiced capacity. And in a world that offers endless distraction and instant gratification, it may be the most important capacity we develop.
Our Research-Backed Approach
Neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Center for Healthy Minds have identified four pillars of well-being — awareness, connection, insight, and purpose — and found that each one is skill that can be strengthened with practice. See how our Middle School has been teaching these skills for over 50 years.
Awareness
MWS students master analogue tools before digital ones — mental math, handwriting, hand tools, library research — and a two-hour daily main lesson asks for the kind of sustained attention screens erode. Outcome: Excellence
Research by developmental cognitive neuroscience Adele Diamond shows that focusing exclusively on training cognitive skills is less efficient and ultimately less successful than also addressing emotional, social, spiritual, and physical needs, and she specifically investigates the roles of storytelling, dance, music, physical activity, and mindfulness in improving executive functions and academic and mental health outcomes.
Connection
A class teacher who stays with the same group for years. An 8th Grade/1st Grade Buddy System in which our oldest students mentor our youngest, weekly. Outcome: Belonging
Research from the the Harvard Study of Adult Development states that the quality of relationships is the single strongest predictor of health and happiness in later life, outpacing wealth, fame, IQ, and even cholesterol!
Insight
In 7th grade, a creative writing block on wish, wonder, and surprise gives students language for an emotional life that is powerful and largely unexamined. Outcome: Self-Knowledge
James Pennebaker's forty years of research at UT Austin found that writing about one's inner life carries measurable benefit — not from venting, but from the work of shaping experience into words. Our seventh graders spend a full block doing exactly that, learning to name an emotional life that is powerful and, at thirteen, largely unexamined.
Purpose
The Grade 8 independent research project: choose a subject, pursue it deeply, present it publicly. Outcome: Maturity
Research from William Damon, Professor of Education at Stanford and director of its Center on Adolescence, found that only about one in five young people are thriving with a clear sense of purpose, while roughly one in four remain rudderless. Purpose, meanwhile, tracks with academic achievement, resilience, and psychological and physical health across the lifespan.
A Human Approach to Tech
Technology and Digital Literacy are thoughtfully incorporated into the middle school curriculum. In addition to developing keyboarding proficiency, students receive explicit instruction in online research skills for use in research projects in 7th and 8th grades. Lessons emphasize critical evaluation of sources and appropriate use of technology in academic work. Learn more about our school’s thoughtful and age-appropriate approach to technology.
Stewardship of the Earth
Outdoor and Environmental Education are an integral aspect of middle school program. Environmental Education is focused on stewardship of our beautiful 10-acre campus and developing an understanding of the environmental impacts of our water, waste, and recycling systems. Students take a series of memorable class trips to locations around California, as well as a capstone trip in the 8th grade year. Read about a recent 7th grade trip to the Shasta Wilderness.
Strong in STEM
In our middle school classrooms, science instruction begins with observation, using what is known as a phenomenological approach. In a phenomenological approach, students aren’t introduced to scientific principles through lectures and reading. Instead, a lesson begins with experimentation, observation, and hypothesis—teaching students to think like scientists do. Learn more about our approach to science instruction.
Extraordinary Teachers
At the heart of the middle school program is our dedicated middle school faculty, who bring experience, depth, and genuine care to their teaching. Together, we are committed to providing a curriculum that challenges the intellect, nurtures the emotional life, and supports the development of capable, creative, and socially conscious individuals. Our goal is to help these students meet this ever-shifting world with confidence, adaptability, and a strong sense of inner purpose. Meet the team!
“These relationships will last forever if you nurture them. You will make friends in high school, college, and beyond, but your MWS classmates will forever be sacred, their loyalty and love for you will always there. Keep it with you.”
— Jake Pearl, Class of 2005, speaking at the 2025 graduation