
Programming
MGP LEADS (Leadership, Equity, Activism, Diversity & Service)
MGP LEADS is Middle Grades Partnership’s approach to leadership and social justice education and takes place year round. Middle Grades Partnership’s Vision Statement speaks to ‘Uniting public and private school communities to create indelible experiences that enable students to thrive as friends, scholars, leaders, and citizens.’ MGP LEADS will enhance our ability to see that vision come to life. MGP LEADS increases our ability to realize that vision for our students.
Building on our students’ innate interest in social justice, MGP LEADS facilitates each partnership tackling those issues in a way that is deep, comprehensive, and age-appropriate. The topics are guided by student choice and realized through project-based learning. Students thus develop their voice, leadership capacity, and social-emotional maturity. MGP LEADS reinforces academic competencies including organization, research, writing, and presentation as well as important 21st Century skills such as cultural competency, resilience, and teamwork.
Middle Grades Partnership Summer
Middle Grades Partnership is enriching and not remedial. Integrated into the core subjects (reading, writing, and math) are classes that may include history, global studies, media studies, environmental studies, a full complement of STEM subjects, Shakespeare, poetry, or foreign languages. One partnership integrates all subjects into well-developed, weekly Design Thinking projects. Class sizes are small with discussion and critical thinking key to the work. Our teachers create collaborative experiences in problem-solving and group projects. In addition to traditional academic subjects, our partnerships offer art classes, ceramics, dance, challenge courses, theatre, and multi-disciplinary math and music combinations that take full advantage of the private school campus resources. Last year our students enjoyed horseback riding, overnight camping, stream studies, designing and launching their own rockets, college visits, canoeing and sailing trips, and museum tours in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. In one partnership, students studying anatomy dissected a fetal pig. In another, they produced ‘TED Talks.’ Our teachers are experts at tailoring programming to meet the developmental needs of students. They differentiate both structure and instruction between grade levels and learning styles.