USA School Day

Spend a Day in School in the USA!

Every school is different in the United States, but these pictures will give you an idea of the education in the exciting Middle School of the Episcopal Academy.

Episcopal is an independent K-12 college preparatory school near Philadelphia. The students who attend my school love to learn and work hard. The sweater below symbolizes some of the qualities we hope our students will learn and share with others. Do teachers in your school want students to act with these qualities too? See how our school is the same or different from yours.

Getting to Know Each Other

Each teacher in our middle school has a special group of students called the advisory.

Advisory is a time to talk about friends, classes, or parents, things that are going well or things that aren't.

When 6th grade begins, we help each other to get organized! We keep our lockers clean...sort of.

We share ideas for organizing our books and papers for each class. Labels and color help.

On Valentine's Day, people often do nice things for each other. This is a pretty funny activity.

We write kind words on cards on our classmates' backs! It feels good to read the good things people write!

Sometimes people forget to be nice to each other, though. Then we try to remind each other not to bully or be mean. We have discussions with our teachers, we do role plays, and we make signs.

We do special projects, like the Kindness and Justice Challenge. In the 2 weeks around Dr. King's birthday, we write notes about all the kind and fair things we notice people doing

We study hard and sit at desks, just like kids in other schools around the country and the world. But pictures of us sitting at our desks would not be very exciting!

We read books and discuss them. We sometimes act out scenes from the books we read. We're not just playing!

We decorate our English journals with pictures of things we like. That helps us get ideas for writing.

At our school, we write a lot. We write poems, personal narratives, essays, and stories.

We have a poetry slam. It's a contest for poets to perform their poems in an exciting way.

Our teachers give us scores, like in the Olympics. These are the winners of the 2005 Slam!

We read books as a class, and we also read books on our own. We give book reports on books we read.

And we even dress as the characters. We have debates and discussions, too. We have a public speaking contest that is nerve-wracking!

Research Projects in Social Studies Class

We learn lots of things about our country. We learn about the geography, the American Indians, the early colonists, and how our country was built by people from all over the world.

We do research, make projects, and have debates. We also study current events and world issues. We have a special research project and teach the class what we learned.

We take six weeks on a research project called the Multimedia Project. We choose the topic! We take notes on notecards and write a report.

We teach our classmates about our topic, using projects, posters, electronic media, and even games we create ourselves.

We fill the entire hall with a display.

Even teachers and parents learn from our work.

Someone might research the Shakers, an American utopian community.

A student might learn about the fight for women's suffrage (voting) in the USA.

One student might research the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese airforce during World War II.

And another student might research the Manhattan Project and the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities.

Tough Topics in American History

Every country has good and bad events in its history. We learn about the good times when people stood up for peace and justice in our country's history. We also learn about the sad times in our country's history, when people's rights were not respected and when people were treated unfairly.

In 6th grade we study early American history. We learn about the many different cultures and accomplishments of people who came to these shores from other lands. But, we also learn that our goverment made treaties with the American Indians and broke the promises made.We learn about the exploitation of the Africans who were brought to America as slaves. These are hard lessons to learn, but by studying them, we hope to avoid the problems of the past by thinking of better ways to do things in the future.

We learn about the many different American Indian nations of our country. After weeks of research, we have an Extravaganza.

The Extravaganza is a day when we turn our school into a museum of Indian cultures. We even teach the younger students about Indian culture and lifestyle. It's fun!

Here we are imagining what could have been done better in our country's history... What if?

In the Utopia Project, we plan communities that are just, fair, and sustainable.

We have ideas about ways the Indians, Europeans and Africans of our early history...

...could have lived together in harmony and peace, without exploitation and disrespect. We plan ways to use the resources wisely, too.

Here are some of our thoughts on this project:

"You can’t go back in time and change stuff, but it did make me think in a new way…"

"I learned how to make a successful community, which we will have in the future…" "I learned that you need to think beyond…"

Community Action Projects

There's a saying in our country:
"To those to whom much has been given, much is expected."
With the Community Action Project or CAP, we get to try to solve some of the world's problems. We each choose a problem we would like to solve, and working alone or with other students, we try to make the world a little bit better!

We raise money to help children in need.

We encourage people to recycle cans and bottles.

We encourage people to eat right and exercise.

We raise money for animal shelters that take care of abandoned pets.

We collect toys for a homeless shelter.

Or, we bring flower pots to a nursing home.

We also take field trips. Our longest ride is 5 hours to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown Settlement.

Here we are in Jamestown, where guides dressed in Colonial clothes tell us about life for the English settlers and the Indians they met in 1607.

We even go camping together.

We work and play together and have lots of fun.

Here we are building a boat out of cardboard and plastic. We have to cooperate...

...and we have to think creatively. If we are not careful, our team's boat will sink!

Many people celebrate Halloween by wearing costumes! At our school, we have a pie race.

Everyone runs around the track wearing their costumes. The winners get a slice of pie!

Even the teachers get dressed up! One year they dressed as the Hogwarts teachers from the Harry Potter books!

One year, they all wore bird masks!

There is so much more that goes on in our school. In addition to the advisory, English, and history classes you see above, there are classes in math, science, French or Spanish, health, music, drama, art, computers, library, and religion. (Our school is a Christian school, but students of any religion may attend.) We even have electives in dance, stock market, debate, robotics, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, United Nations, Nobel Peace Prize winners, and other topics teachers want to teach and students want to learn.
And, after all the classes are finished, we get to play sports!