Middle School Principal's Message

The middle school years are the most challenging in the growth and development of young people, and one of the many strengths of our Middle School is the ability to provide an environment that is academically challenging, yet sensitive to the needs of such a unique population. We realize that these years are marked with change – social, emotional, intellectual, and physical – and that these changes bring a unique set of challenges for our students. They are searching for identity, facing tremendous growth, preoccupied with internal problems, yet beset with external influences.

The overriding goal of Stratford Academy’s Middle School is to help students maximize their talents and gifts while bolstering their areas of need. We do this through an approach that we believe best equips our children to grow into responsible, caring, and productive citizens. We feel that for optimum instruction to occur, the students and we must work cooperatively to establish and maintain a positive and secure classroom environment that places the focus on the learners.

As an integral part of Stratford Academy’s focus on academic excellence, the Middle School curriculum provides a solid foundation in academic disciplines that develops both critical thinking skills and the ability to learn independently. Instruction focuses on the development of proficiency in mathematics, written and spoken communications, laboratory skills in the sciences, an awareness of our world and its development through social studies, and an appreciation for the arts.

The Middle School faculty provides an approach to learning that is exemplified by going beyond the textbook to help students absorb and assimilate information as it relates to their lives. This faculty is an accomplished group of professionals who realize the importance of weaving what is learned at school into lifelong decision making. Each faculty member has specific content-related training as well as experience in shaping young people’s lives. Their expertise, both as a group and as individuals, facilitates the discovery of individual uniqueness by each student, while their collaborative work enhances the vital connection in our students between making decisions and acting on them. We realize the students’ needs for achievement and success in their studies and in extracurricular activities, yet we encourage them to hold these within a framework of integrity and humility. Our teachers consistently model compassion, confidence, friendliness, honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility for our students.

Stratford Academy’s Middle School is a very special place. It is a place where students are encouraged to understand themselves as unique individuals with important responsibilities, to find success in understanding the underlying principles and ways of knowing, and to apply their studies and knowledge to their lives and to the lives of others.