What Summer Camp Can Teach Us

With students joining us from over 25 towns and dozens of different primary schools, we require our students to try something new here, both academically and socially. Our requirement of at least two seasons of after-school activities for middle schoolers is an invitation to take positive risks, whether athletic or artistic. Our Middle School Girls Soccer team’s Super Six championship is a fitting testament to this spirit, with several players on the team giving soccer a try for the first time. Middle school participants are indispensable to our Sense and Sensibility cast and crew; the fall play simply wouldn’t happen without their many contributions. Additionally, our Friday Flex Block student-led programming incentivizes exploring new interests and leading new initiatives. Recent offerings include Model UN, Mock Trial, Students for Social Justice, GSA, Spelling Bee Club, Middle School Chorus, FA WiSE, and Captain Sonar, to name a few.

After nearly 50 years in the business, Falmouth Academy has developed countless middle school experiences that honor a tradition of academic excellence, interdisciplinary thought, and pride of place. All Falmouth Academy graduates fondly recall Marconi Beach Day, the Science Fair, Spirit Week, and Capture the Flag, of course. Every seventh grader also remembers Watershed Day and its accompanying Arts Across the Curriculum “batiks,” as well as the Folktales and Greek Drama Festivals. And what would eighth grade be without Declamation Day?

Cultivating community is at the heart of everything we do. All School Meeting this week featured middle school voices presenting friends’ birthdays, reciting poetry, announcing sports teams’ wins and losses, and encouraging attendance at the fall play. Our Middle School Free Skate on November 15 will bring the seventh and eighth grades together for an afternoon of ice skating and laughter. Events like last week’s Diwali Festival in Dr. Hamilton’s Humanities class and an upcoming lecture with Dr. Nitana Hicks Greendeer on the Wôpanâak language acknowledge the richness of an educational experience that includes people with diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and identities.

At summer camp, I am responsible for publishing the “Plan of the Week,” a document that all campers and staff honor religiously, accounting for every minute of every day, seven days a week. As I said goodnight to tired, happy students making their way to the buses as darkness fell yesterday (several of whom will be performing in the play this weekend and/or had just participated in the first-ever Falmouth Academy pickleball tournament), I wondered what it might be like to produce a similar document for the Falmouth Academy middle school. In all likelihood, there simply wouldn’t be enough space on the page to capture all of what’s happening here!