Upper School
In the Upper School, we continue to engage the imagination and intellect of our students, guide them in both independent and cooperative efforts, and encourage their faithful participation in the world.
Here, in order that students may become confident and self-directed learners, as well as responsible members of a beloved community, we combine security with challenge, playful exploration (inside and outside our walls) with rigorous expectation, a wide range of experience, and depth of inquiry.
The Intermediate Grades: Grades 4 & 5
Visitors to the Fourth- and Fifth-grade classrooms will see students who are mind-ful. They are weighing evidence to determine what is true in the text of an informational article, a science experiment, or an interview. They are examining artifacts, stories, and a world language (Spanish) in order to study varied viewpoints. They are creating graphs and charts and looking for mathematical patterns and relationships. Through the visual arts and music, they are, on a daily basis, engaging with expressions that cross time and space. In class meetings, they are making individual and corporate plans, resolutions, and commitments.
The Shared Space Extension is a central feature of the Fourth and Fifth Grade experience. As in the Lower School’s Shared Space, children continue to express and present their learning through a variety of media.
Writing, reading, math, and science skills are honed during this two-year period as students approach central subjects that naturally integrate the academic disciplines. While, in social studies, students explore rural and urban communities, state and national history, world exploration, and geography, science experiments include related studies of plant and animal life cycles, earth movements, pollution, space exploration, and machines. Writing, which naturally extends and shapes learning, takes on greater detail as students utilize technology for both research and word processing, compose and revise multiple drafts, and edit simple essays. Reading becomes deeper and more independent, as students develop a repertoire of comprehension strategies and take on increasingly complex texts. Mathematics not only moves students through fractions, decimals, and complex graphing, but also promotes the memorization of math facts and active work in problem solving.
Throughout the grades, the aesthetic experiences of students are rightly included in our core curriculum. This is reflected in a year that if filled with trips that give students first hand experience with cultural centers such as Carnegie Hall, Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania, the Beuhler Challenger Center, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Museum of the Native American Indian. It is reflected in weekly experiences in music and art instruction (each taking place twice a week), physical education, choral performance, and class meetings. Still, more it is reflected in the daily participation in worship, Shared Space Extension, and morning meetings.
When students enter Fourth Grade, they begin with an urge to stretch and wonder and “do!” In Fifth Grade they can seemingly take on anything and love every minute of it. These are years where experiment, travel, conversation, story, and challenge make for growing confidence, responsibility, and celebration.
The Final Years: Grades 6-8
In Sixth Grade, students are becoming ready to spread their wings and take flight. In Chorus, students perform in contexts that range from the Honors! performance at the Apollo theater to Evensong at All Saints Church in Hoboken. They take on the climbing wall, as a part of the outdoor education program at Spruce Lake. They extend their studies through important field trips: studying the Cold War at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, meeting Holocaust survivors at The Museum of Jewish Heritage, reading historic documents at the National Constitution Center, interviewing clergy from the Coptic Church of Jersey City, and participating in the acclaimed program, Jewish and Islamic connections. At the same time, they view, by way of the internet, live concerts from India and Mexico (thanks to the production work of Carnegie Hall).
There are several features that distinctly mark our students’ final years at Mustard Seed, including our school residency program at Carnegie Hall, Service Learning, Outdoor Education, Academic Teams, Advisory, High School Advisement, and academic exhibitions.
Carnegie Hall School Residency Program
Mustard Seed School has been privileged to be among the select members of the Carnegie Hall School Residency Program. Through the Weil Institute’s Global Encounters and American Roots program, our Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grader students work closely with musicians from Carnegie Hall and participate in live performance of African-American Spirituals to traditional Hindustani pieces, to a Mexican corrido.
Service Learning
Throughout the grades, students are continually engaged in meaningful service that impacts our local and global community. With this in mind, our oldest students begin to experience the relationship between leadership and service. These young adolescents – these emerging adults - help lead all-school celebrations, guide younger students in park and classroom activities, meet leaders of local chapters of Habitat for Humanity and other agencies, and do the practical work of volunteering at local organizations such as In Jesus Name.
Outdoor Education
For nearly twenty years, students in grades six through eight have participated in the annual outdoor education program at Spruce Lake in Pennsylvania (three days and two nights). Far from the city, students read the stars, a compass, and the natural environment in order to navigate while hiking and they take part in cooperative team-building challenges that stretch their physical and personal mettle. It is, without a doubt, among the most well-remembered of experiences.
Advisory
Designed to facilitate strong connections between students and advisors, small advising groups focus on developmentally appropriate topics that touch on self-awareness, community membership, and stewardship. Ten faculty advisors also support students in groups of approximately four students as they work on the academic challenge of high volume reading, prepare for academic exhibitions, and begin the high school application process.
Academic Teams
As our students begin to swing from childhood to adulthood, it is essential that they learn in situations that combine meaningful relationships with interdisciplinary learning. This is why our Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Grade students will work in academic teams to study science, history, PE, art, and music. In each team, a mix of Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grade students consistently engage new points of view, take on leadership roles, and communicate with new audiences as they experiment, research, and create together.
High School Advisement
At Mustard Seed, a team of faculty not only supports students as they write high school application essays, develop extra-curricular resumes, and take entrance examinations, but also advises each parent as he or she works to make the most appropriate choices for their child.
More on high school advisement.
Academic Exhibitions
An Eighth Grade diploma from Mustard Seed School represents, among many other things, the completion of eight exhibitions in which students demonstrate their knowledge and competence in literature, mathematics, science, history, leadership and service, and the arts. A portfolio of collected work, on-demand tasks, essays, created artifacts, and planned oral presentations form the basis for each student’s exhibition, which is attended by faculty, peers, and invited guests. In the end, students continually exceed their own expectations – and we are all privileged to see what they have become.
More about Academic Exhibitions
Prepared for High School and Beyond
Academically, students are rightly stretched in their last years. Students give weekly book talks as they strive to independently read a significant novel or non-fiction text every week, which amounts to a reading log of more than 100 books by graduation. High volume reading is an important goal that prepares students well for high school demands. As students work to complete Algebra I by the end of eighth grade, they also meet visiting professionals who personally show the relevance of mathematics to real life. In science, students perform multiple experiments and take on complex topics in pre-Chemistry, physical science, and biology. In history, world and national events are understood in their relationship to their geography, as students work out their map-reading skills. Elements of the arts are, as always, integrated throughout the curriculum, so that students create as they explore cultural, historical, and aesthetic relevance.
In the end, at graduation day, we can see that our goals for our students in Eighth Grade have been the same goals we held when they entered Kindergarten, but the culmination of this work is astounding. They have become, before our eyes:
- inquiring and reflective thinkers, who can reason and calculate well, ask incisive questions, and solve complex problems.
- effective communicators, who can use and understand varied forms of human expression, including languages, numerical and symbolic systems, maps, graphs and diagrams, artistic media, drama, dance, and music.
- self-directed and ethical individuals, who act with integrity and moral sensibility, with understanding and respect for others’ ideas, creations, and cultures.
- responsible and caring people, who, with a wide understanding of the world, are prepared to participate actively for the sake of justice and mercy.
- world contributors, who understand the importance and consequence of scientific and technological innovation, political and social change, artistry and service.