breckschool.org
Middle School
Confidence in knowing.
This is your time. As you change, as you grow, as you discover what you can do…you’ll understand who you can become.
Welcome to Middle School
“At Breck, your teachers get to know you as a learner and as a person, and that really helps you have the best time at school.”
Ada Middle School Student
Middle School at Breck provides an abundance of student opportunities to both fortify areas of interest and delve into uncharted regions.
In approaching these opportunities, we encourage students to both ask and field questions, to seek and provide answers, to initiate new friendships and nourish existing ones, and to appreciate the diverse experiences that members of our community bring on a daily basis.
Now is the time and place to help students navigate their individual journeys toward a more defined sense of self as members of a larger community. Our accomplished, experienced faculty collaborates with, guides, and engages students in an appropriately challenging yet supportive program.
Through intentional time dedicated to supporting students’ learning, growth, and development, Middle School students learn to understand their place in the world and their role in supporting the common good. Upon completion, students are poised, confident, and ready for what awaits in the Upper School.
Sky Fauver Middle School Director
It’s time to explore.
Middle School is a time of growth and exploration — intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Our curriculum is designed to guide students as they understand themselves, their world, and the role they want to play in it.
Academic Challenge
Spanning grades 5 to 8, the Middle School experience at Breck is dedicated to providing a safe environment for students to navigate their journeys as academics, artists, athletes, and members of a larger community.
Guided by an accomplished and veteran faculty, students actively engage in a program designed to challenge and support them.
Interdisciplinary Learning
When a student learns to apply the skills they’ve gained in one subject to the learning of another, it deepens their understanding of both.
Throughout Middle School, our faculty put specific emphasis on enhancing their curricula by including other disciplines. Culminating in a Grade 8 Capstone Project, this approach prepares every student for the breadth and depth of Upper School.
Elective Offerings
Middle School students have the opportunity to enroll in a wide selection of academic electives to expose them to subjects beyond their core curriculum. We offer classes on Constitutional Law, Engineering, Economics and Finance, Sports and Society, and Creating Virtual Reality Experiences, just to name a few.
Advisory Program
As part of our commitment to nurturing the whole child, we assign each student a faculty advisor to be a formal, personal, and academic advocate. During formal and informal weekly meetings, advisors focus on developing studying and class strategies, process personal relationships, and facilitate effective, efficient communication among faculty, students, and parents.
Play to your strengths.
At Breck, every activity is another opportunity to learn.
We offer a comprehensive and competitive athletic program that emphasizes the importance of commitment and preparation, personal growth, and teamwork. Our athletes strive for excellence in their sport and, independent of outcome, compete with grace and school pride.
The Performing Arts at Breck provide students more than just the chance to grow and explore their own selfexpression and creativity — it’s a chance for them to build something together. Through dance, music, and theatre, students gain firsthand exposure to the arts and develop the skills and discipline to create something as a group.
Our Visual Arts Department is studiobased at its very core. Students create work in vivid, beautiful studio spaces under the guidance of real working artists who share their knowledge, talent, enthusiasm, and inspirations that rouse their imagination.
Please
the course guide at breckschool.org for more details.
Strong body. Strong mind.
In order to develop lifelong good habits, all students are required to take four age-appropriate wellness classes per year.
Project Adventure
Project Adventure provides our students the opportunity to strengthen their leadership and teamwork skills. Through team-building exercises, individual challenges, and even conquering our campus high ropes courses, Middle School students will learn to take risks, solve problems, and ultimately succeed together.
Outdoor Education
This program, utterly unique to Breck, immerses students in our great Minnesota outdoors to connect with nature, form lasting connections to one another, and uncover the leaders within. From orienteering to fire building, archery to canoeing, students learn to lead, follow, build compassion for one another, and understand the responsibility of stewarding the environment we share.
Health
Health education provides students with important knowledge and skills to maintain their physical, social, and emotional health. Here, students learn about positive behaviors and lifestyle choices, risks of injury and illness, disease prevention and management strategies, and an understanding of their own growth and development.
Physical Education Teamwork. Leadership. Personal achievement. Our Physical Education program develops students’ selfconfidence and self-esteem while participating in a variety of developmentally appropriate activities, all while promoting an affinity for an active, healthy lifestyle.
Building towards greatness.
Middle School Competencies
Our core competencies — creativity, critical thinking, communication, agency, well-being, citizenship, and collaboration — align and guide student learning experiences that grow our collective capacity to lead lives of intellectual curiosity, selfknowledge, and social responsibility.
Teaching and learning
Students are active agents in their learning as they make meaning of their experiences and context. As an articulation of both goals and practices, the competencies shift teaching from providing information to empowering students to become active meaning makers who seek deep understanding and are able to transfer their learning.
Gatherings & Travel
Think without borders.
Throughout the year, we plan opportunities for the entire Middle School to gather — from the seats of the Cargill Theater to the slopes of Hyland Hills. In addition, students in grade 6 through grade 8 participate in a trip to deepen an element of their curriculum and grow relationships across the Middle School.
Trips have included Camp Icaghowan Washington, D.C. Wolf Ridge Catalina Island
Specific trips will depend on your student’s curriculum.
