Middle Schools

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Both Shepherd Valley and Shining Mountain offer middle school grades within their grades 1-8 program, rather than having a middle school as a pre-high school. This comes from a belief that it’s useful for children of those ages to interact together socially with mutual respect. It benefits the younger children, who look up to the 7th and 8th graders with anticipation for the day when they will have those expanded capabilities. It also benefits the 7th and 8th graders, who develop compassion and a sense of social responsibility for those who are younger. They also learn by teaching.

An example of this is the Halloween celebration. For the younger ones, there is a non-scary Halloween Journey, while those 12 and older have a Perilous Path. However, by the time children are in the 8th grade, they often have an awakened sense of social responsibility, such that they want to create and perform a skit for the younger ones on the Halloween Journey.