THS staff participated in a collaborative professional development program in early August to help define and implement purpose and goals. We worked collaboratively on human-centered design projects to further develop our social and emotional learning program, enhance student support, build community partnerships, and develop interdisciplinary units in our Middle School. These four projects will be developed throughout the school year.

Middle School teachers are excited to build on the transdisciplinary thinking students acquire in the Lower School IB program. Teachers brainstormed unifying themes in each grade, and the students will explore each throughout the year across the disciplines. By exploring essential questions, students will be challenged to consider how they can take their learning into the world beyond THS and use action to have an impact. The entire faculty is looking forward to seeing how this work will deepen the attributes and critical thinking at the core of our IB Program and support our students in cultivating a sense of purpose.

 We represented each of these essential questions with our variations and then had arrows pointing out from our circle that represented the students applying their learning and bringing it out into the world.  We had a box at the bottom of our circle that represented the foundational base of the IB primary school at THS that our students come into Middle School with.