"We Do Middle School Differently."
7th and 8th Grades on their “First Friday” kayaking trip.
Mrs. Ashley Ewer has been teaching Middle School at Ambleside for six years, having taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. She explains below why Ambleside’s Middle School program is unlike any other.
Often when people hear I teach Middle School, they react negatively. Most of us have uncomfortable, even painful memories of our own Middle School years. I’m happy to say that at Ambleside, we do Middle School differently.
Why is Ambleside’s Middle School different? The key is relationships.
Small class sizes with a single classroom teacher who knows, loves, and is watchfully attuned to her students and to the relational atmosphere of the classroom, along with our Charlotte Mason pedagogy, makes all the difference.
This is a friendly place to make mistakes, to grow through struggle, and navigate awkwardness and silliness while stretching towards the level of competence and care we expect of our graduates.
We recognize the Holy Spirit as the Supreme Educator, and thus we pursue Christ throughout our school day, both academically and relationally, not merely during our daily Bible classes and weekly Chapel.
We provide purposeful work and hands-on learning, covering 19 different subjects each week, and a rich, rigorous curriculum that includes many great books commonly studied in classical high schools. Our students interact directly with original thinkers, reading their unabridged writings and closely studying their poetry, artworks, and musical pieces.
Ambleside’s Middle School is marked by authenticity.
Our 6th graders love their special monthly L’Abri lunches, formal meals of hot soup and bread, where we practice table manners and connect around good books or a guest speaker. Our 7th and 8th graders enjoy monthly outings with staff such as camping, canoeing, a high ropes course, hiking at Harper’s Ferry, visiting the Waterford Fair, ice skating at the National Sculpture Garden, seeing the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, and watching A Christmas Carol at Ford’s Theater, among many others. These are some of the strongest and fondest memories our graduates have of Middle School.
And that’s not including all of our Field Studies.
Our Middle Schoolers do genuine, gritty field trips like touring the Fairfax County Wastewater Treatment Plant, entering a World War I submarine in Baltimore, helping raise the flag over Ft. McHenry, and watching a live, open heart surgery at the Inova Heart Dome.
Our Science Program’s rigor is high, including labs and dissections. My father, who teaches medical students, looked through our 8th grade science journals and said to me, “this is college or post-college level anatomy work.”
Despite our rigor, Ambleside is a place where many Middle Schoolers with learning differences receive kindness, patience, and the individualized attention they need to strengthen weaknesses, find success, and thrive. And we do it all without constant test-taking or a points and percentages atmosphere that promotes either pride or anxiety.
Our Middle Schoolers have daily outdoor recess and frequent outdoor lunches. Our PE curriculum in Middle School includes firebuilding and archery. Our Fine Arts program is both comprehensive and mandatory. That means, every one of our Middle Schoolers sings in a choir, learns to play the recorder and the xylophone, acts in an annual Shakespeare play, paints weekly in Nature Study, creates beautiful drawings and handwork projects, and participates in Art class all year long.
Our Middle Schoolers get lots of practice reading aloud to one another and reciting memorized passages of Scripture and poetry with elocution and expression, which prepares them well for public speaking roles in high school and beyond.
Our combined 7th/8th grade class learns typing, builds robots, and learns to code and debug in Arduino. This, and our Yearbook Club for Middle Schoolers, are the only times students use screens here. We emphasize technology as a tool for creating, not a toy for consumption.
I’ve recently seen article after article lamenting that today’s high school and college-age students are almost wholly dependent on AI to do writing and coding assignments, and even to answer questions aloud in class. Technology in schools has enabled students to bypass the assimilation, struggle, and effort that mark the genuinely educated person of character. Students are cheating their way through school on a level never seen before.
Ambleside’s hands-on, pencil-and-paper, real book, and Socratic discussion approach is AI-proof. There’s no getting around our essay-style exams, our in-class readings, or all the beautiful work we do in our journals. And the difference in our students’ learning is clear.
Furthermore, our students do all of this work here at school. Aside from their nightly math homework, our Middle Schoolers have very few take-home assignments, leaving evenings and weekends free for family life and the pursuit of individual interests.
One of the most touching moments every year is the 8th grade graduation dinner we hold for our graduates and their parents. Each student is honored by a collaboratively written tribute from our staff – which is only possible because these students are seen as individuals and are understood. And students write and deliver the most touching (and hilarious) tributes to their school and their parents who made this unique education possible. Our graduates go on to many excellent local high schools both public and private.
Several of our families have found that Middle School is the worst time to make a sudden change in schooling, and that keeping their students here, in a familiar environment where they are known, valued, and seen as persons, makes Middle School years smoother.
My own sons started here in Kindergarten, graduated from Ambleside as 8th graders, and are doing well at two different classical Christian high schools. We often say that we just don’t do grouchy teenagers in our home, and their Ambleside experience is a big reason why. I’ve toured six of the other private Christian Middle schools in Northern Virginia and can confidently say that our Middle School program is truly exceptional. It is a place unlike any other, where your children will thrive and become young adults of character, faith and wisdom.
Friend,
I hope Mrs. Ewer's description of an Ambleside Middle School experience inspired and encouraged you. By graduation, Middle Schoolers are confident learners and thoughtful young men and women. They enter high school well prepared—intellectually curious, spiritually grounded, and eager to engage with the world in wisdom and service. They become people who give back to their community and strive to spread Christ’s Kingdom in everything they do. They speak of their years at Ambleside with fondness and gratitude.
If this beautiful glimpse intrigues you and you'd like to learn more, we would love to connect. Schedule a tour to see this life-giving education for yourself.
For the children’s sake,
Krise
Kristin Nowak, M.Ed.
Head of School