Academic Excellence

A strong academic foundation. A love of learning. Competence, confidence, and creativity. At Calvert, the Middle School is a safe and nurturing environment that cultivates these essential characteristics in every student. We celebrate each student's individual strengths and different learning styles and create opportunities for each student to succeed and shine. As a community, we collaborate with one another to ensure that each child reaches his or her full potential academically, socially, and emotionally.

Important academic, social, and developmental skills are addressed by tailoring the program to the specific needs of the Fifth and Sixth Grades, and the Seventh and Eighth Grades. Class sizes average between 12 and 15 students.

The atmosphere of the Middle School, while in keeping with time-honored traditions, is different and distinct from the lower grades and is intended to develop a sense of growing independence and emergence of self so critical to this age group. The wireless laptop program allows students to access and process information from anywhere in the school.

The faculty inspires students to cultivate new interests and sharpen essential skills, while gaining moral strength, resilience, and an appreciation for differences within and beyond their community. Calvert School prepares its graduates to embrace the challenges awaiting them with confidence, a love of learning, and a growing sense of themselves and their place in the world.

Academics
In the classroom, teachers have high expectations for all students and create challenging, relevant, and exploratory lessons and curricula built upon the strong foundational academic skills acquired in the Lower School. We take great pride in Calvert's rich history and vibrant traditions and blend them with a growing technology program and all the benefits of educational innovation.

Within the core academic subjects, we provide the students with the classic academic tools they need: public speaking, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking, alongside cutting-edge 21st Century technological capabilities. Within the larger school community, student government, community service, and peer tutoring all offer appropriate and effective leadership opportunities.

Study skills, organization, and time management are imbedded in our advisory program as well as in our core academic classes. Fine arts are also an important part of the Middle School curriculum. Students have the opportunity to take enrichment courses, such as Studio Art, Music, Drama, and Digital Photography.

In the Middle School, each grade targets developmentally-appropriate skills and concepts that broaden students' understanding of the world around them. Fifth Graders continue the skill building that began in lower school, with particular focus on math, grammar, and writing skills that will serve them well later on. In Sixth Grade, students begin to explore and expand their grasp of these skills so that they can apply them to a wider realm of ideas. Seventh and Eighth Grades begin to truly embrace analytical thinking, studying subjects like Latin, World History, Enlightenment Philosophy, Shakespeare, and Dickens.

We believe that introduction to these advanced ideas in the older grades allows students to truly challenge themselves, putting their skills to the test in a safe and familiar environment, so that when they encounter difficult material in high school, they will already have had the experience of succeeding when faced with intellectual challenges.

Students who graduate from the Middle School leave to attend some of the most prestigious schools in the country and enter the next phase of their education with a strong sense of self-confidence and purpose.

Community
Our faculty is made up of Middle School specialists. They have a deep understanding that the Middle School years are a time of rapid growth and an important window of opportunity to begin to shape our students into the men and women they will one day become. Inside the classroom, each member of the faculty is reflective and eager to learn the best ways to inspire and educate our students. They are eager to work in partnership with parents to ensure the most successful learning environment for each child. But they also know that their teaching must be applied to the whole child.

Teachers work with our students in all aspects of community life: in our halls, on our fields, and in the larger Baltimore community to inspire and educate Calvert students about the world around them. At Calvert, we seek to guide our students to help them make responsible decisions and find teachable moments in each opportunity they encounter.

Advisory
The Advisory is central to our program, providing academic and social support to each student in a small, single-sex group setting. Meeting twice a week, Advisory provides each child with a personal and accessible relationship with an adult at Calvert.

The Advisor is a child's advocate and helps him or her navigate the intellectual and social challenges of early adolescence. In formal meetings and more casual interactions, the Advisor coordinates a student's experience, ensuring that teachers, administrators and parents communicate with and support the student to meet his or her unique needs. In advisory, life skills like goal setting and effective communication are nurtured through a variety of activities that are deeply relevant to the lives of modern teenagers. Most importantly, the advisor ensures that each child has a safe place here at school and an adult in whom they can confide.

The Advisory Program is organized into monthly themes addressing issues like Relating to Self and Others, Healthy Living, Friendship, Character, and Decision Making and Values. Weekly assemblies provide a forum for community conversation about these essential themes. We want our students to become effective communicators, build positive and lasting relationships with peers and adults, and make healthy, productive decisions.

Organization and Accountability
The Middle School years mean moving from concrete thinking and memorization to abstract reasoning. In addition to interpersonal skills, the Advisory Program targets these types of skills with themes like Exam Prep and Study Skills, Learning Styles, and Getting Organized.

These programs are designed to help students take more responsibility of their own learning and develop more proficient study skills, organization, and test preparation in order to be successful. Themes such as these expose the students to a variety of tools with which they can experiment. Within this theme, we address different learning styles that help students recognize how they learn, how to express themselves to their teachers, and how to advocate for themselves.