Things to Consider....

Blake Dalton, Principal of Duxbury Middle School, wrote the following in this week's newsletter. He has given us permission to reprint it here.

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Things to Consider...

As the Principal of Duxbury Middle School I’ve been asked several times do you need a new building? Simply put there are so many reasons your students deserve a new middle school building. To best understand the need,  several key items should be understood. Today’s middle schools are very different from the educational tradition of a junior high. Middle school builds the bridge from the elementary setting where a student spent the majority of the day with one teacher to the high school where a student travels from one discipline to another. A successful middle school builds small communities of learners and teachers into teams. In effect, middle schools develop a school within a school. For example, the 850 students currently enrolled at DMS are divided into 7 teams. These 7 teams are composed of roughly 120 students and 5 teachers. There are numerous learning advantages created by placing students on these teams. The most important being the ability for the teachers to get to know and understand the learning styles of the 120 students they teach. By working as a team and across disciplines, teachers are able to share teaching strategies and develop learning projects. In today’s progressive middle school, teachers develop integrated learning units, which cross over the traditional subject area boundaries. Modern middle schools have teaching teams in close proximity to one another in pods or clusters. As DMS was originally built as a high school the very physical layout of the building inhibits and interferes with our ability to have teaching teams located physically near each other. This in turn limits the teachers’ ability to work with their teaching teammates. DMS has very limited space for team gatherings and project work; it is not uncommon to see our students sitting on the floor in the halls working together on projects that the classrooms cannot accommodate.

As the Principal of Duxbury Middle School for the past 3 years, I have been privileged to work with professional educators and students who do not complain, and constantly ensure that no mater what the building throws at them; a leaking roof, a too cold or too hot classroom, that learning takes place. As the outstanding education of children is the town’s most important industry, it goes without saying that supporting the infrastructure has no down side. This year’s action by the MSBA to approve our yearly request for funding may seem inconvenient as the town also looks to approve the Fire and Police Station projects, but the reality is that the building committee had no way of knowing when or if ever the schools would be accepted by the MSBA. There is the tested adage that opportunity only knocks once, we should answer the door. With the MSBA’s approval for funding we have been given an outstanding opportunity to support and provide for our most important investment, our children.

Blake A. Dalton, Principal Duxbury Middle School