Enrich and Empower
Our Middle School program provides a three year curriculum designed to guide learners in the transition from childhood to adolescence and prepare them for High School.
Our Middle School balances a sense of play and wonder, social and emotional learning, and academic challenge. Learners discover themselves, their relationships, their strengths, their passions, their environment, and their world. A carefully curated range of courses, experiences and projects empowers our learners to take responsibility for their own learning, master skills, and understand and apply their own values.
We focus on teaching learners to ask the right questions and be confident searching for answers. We do this through deep reflective practice which prepares them to be more independent, confident learners that understand that they can and do make a positive difference in our world.
In addition to a strong proficiency curriculum (Literacy, Mathematics, Science), students are introduced to a significant amount of personal course choices through Physical Wellbeing, Arts, and Jalan-Jalan (experiential) classes. We embrace Indonesian language learning and cultural experiences throughout the program. Our Middle School education has a strong focus on integrating traditional subjects with projects as much as possible, reflecting the way the world is – connected.
“Our purpose in Middle School is to uncover and strengthen the connections between sustainability and education showing that the two are enfolded in one another in our local and global contexts. We do this learning while promoting life-long wellbeing and the discovery of our learners’ true passions.”
BENJAMIN FREUD – HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL (MIDDLE SCHOOL LEARNING NEIGHBORHOOD)
Our Learning in Action
Learning is infinite. All schools and all learners must make choices. We have learned from our Green School experience that our REAL learning principles serve as lenses to guide our program and prioritise the critical issues of our time. Through these topics, our program encourages students to develop strong skill-sets to make a positive difference for self, community and nature. In practice, we use these REAL Principles to choose the content of our curriculum and the structure of our programmes. In Middle School, our specialisation programs reflect this focus:
JALAN-JALAN
For at least a full half day each week, learners do not follow a timetable and have the time to explore learning in another way. These courses focus on experiential learning in the areas of service, enterprise and outdoor education. Students are asked to step outside of their comfort zones and try something new, as well as given a chance to pursue their passions in these areas. Learners can propose courses as well. Courses are designed to foster leadership, adaptability, awareness, collaboration and creative thinking.
GREEN STUDIES through PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
We know that students learn more from how they are taught than what they are taught. That is why we employ a project-based approach and let students experience their learning in a more hands-on way. Students in Middle School are empowered to start leading their own learning journeys and select their own projects. They can have the freedom to explore an issue and its solutions.
For example, a student could create a renewable energy source, make surfboards from bottle caps collected on the beaches of Bali, regenerate coral reefs by re-planting them, and campaign for local restaurants to stop using plastic straws and provide them with bamboo straws made by them at our on-campus Innovation Hub. Watch this video to learn more.
The culmination of all that is learnt in Middle School is shown to the learner themself and celebrated by our community through the Grade 8 Quest project and presentation highlighted below.
GREEN STUDIES through PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
We know that students learn more from how they are taught than what they are taught. That is why we employ a project-based approach and let students experience their learning in a more hands-on way. Students in Middle School are empowered to start leading their own learning journeys and select their own projects. They can have the freedom to explore an issue and its solutions.
For example, a student could create a renewable energy source, make surfboards from bottle caps collected on the beaches of Bali, regenerate coral reefs by re-planting them, and campaign for local restaurants to stop using plastic straws and provide them with bamboo straws made by them at our on-campus Innovation Hub. Watch this video to learn more.
The culmination of all that is learnt in Middle School is shown to the learner themself and celebrated by our community through the Grade 8 Quest project and presentation highlighted below.
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL WELLBEING and MINDFULNESSG
Each individual Middle School learner builds social and emotional skills through weekly classes focused on age-appropriate themes. The purpose of the program is to empower learners to become stewards of their own health and wellbeing. Relationships are integral to this process – relationships with themselves, their peers, their parents, their teachers, and with the world around them. Our mindfulness programme also plays an integral role in this self development process. Mindfulness teaches important strategies that help students focus their attention, improve self-regulation skills, build resilience, and develop a positive mindset whilst at school and in life. Mindfulness as a practice is a feature of each day across the whole of Green School.
To learn more about how we approach student wellbeing at Green School, click here.
INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING
Green School advocates for interdisciplinary learning because it creates meaningful learning and broadens the notions of knowledge by applying ideas or topics in a variety of contexts. This type of learning removes artificial boundaries between school subject areas. We believe that focused instruction on learning subjects (e.g., literacy, mathematics, and science) is important but incomplete without direct experience and application. The Middle School program used the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a foundation for developing the topics of integrated learning experiences.
CULTURALLY CONNECTED ARTS ELECTIVE PROGRAM
Green School’s Creative Arts Curriculum is richly influenced by our geographical location — the cultural and artistic features that abound in everyday life, celebrations, and festivals in Bali. Students regularly explore several forms of creative arts which fosters student confidence and inspires aesthetic interests, self-awareness, perseverance, and collaboration. The artistic traditions and beauty of Bali is hard to surpass, and we embrace those opportunities to learn locally from these rich traditions and from the artistic skills of our very diverse global community of learners.
Quest
Quest is a Grade 8 Capstone Project that challenges students to identify one of their passions and turn it into a project that has an aspect of environmental or societal sustainability to it. The project culminates in a TED Talk style presentation that helps prepare our students for success in their High School Greenstone presentations and beyond.
Watch some inspiring Quest below:
Colin
Clean Energy Cards
Rinka
Secrets in Art
Paddy
Swim Survival
To watch more student Quest presentations click here.