Our Strong Community Builds Leaders
Middle school is a time when you develop your identity. Doing that in a supportive community is a gift. Belmont Day’s strong community is the deliberate result of extensive planning and effort by faculty and staff. Outside of class, our middle school students have a myriad of opportunities to practice their leadership skills on athletic teams, in the arts, and through cross-graded and school-wide activities. The non-cognitive skills built in these arenas are vital for future success.
Advisor Program
In sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, students are organized into advisory groups. Led by faculty advisors, these groups meet throughout the week to discuss a variety of topics important to adolescents in their lives both in and out of school. The advisor plays an important role as a student advocate for both academic and social-emotional issues and serves as a parent liaison. Advisors also run, along with students, the parent-teacher-student conferences in October and March.
Community Service
At Belmont Day, we teach students to “take responsibility for themselves, each other, and the world around them.” In addition to our annual Community Service Day held in May, students in every grade engage in community service activities throughout the school year.
Recent activities undertaken by our middle school students have included:
- trail maintenance and animal care at Mass Audubon’s Habitat Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Belmont
- Charles River trail cleanup with Waltham Land Trust
- food preparation in the kitchen at Community Servings
Cross-Graded Partnerships
Younger students look up to our middle schoolers, whose community is broadened through partnerships for cross-graded activities. Middle schoolers gain so much from these alliances as they rise to the responsibility of nurturing, encouraging, and inspiring their younger partners.
Ensembles Program
The arts are integral to Belmont Day, embedded in the academic program, and valued by the community. In addition to their classroom experience, students are offered the opportunity to participate in musical ensembles, which provide the experience of learning, practicing, and performing in a small group. The lower school and middle school choruses and the guitar, orchestra, wind, modern band, and world drumming ensembles meet once a week, either before or after school.
Family-style Dining
How and what we eat is central to our overall well-being and the social and emotional growth of our students. Every day the kitchen buzzes with energy and creativity, and students get to witness this process and receive warm greetings from the kitchen staff when they walk by.
Family-style dining in Coolidge Hall is a very real example of our core value of excellence. The kitchen team achieves this by establishing practices that emphasize three intentions:
• fostering community
• promoting social development
• encouraging responsibility and respect for the good food we are fortunate to enjoy and for the people who prepare it
A wide variety of healthy and delicious food options are prepared by our in-house chef. Alternative items are available for those with food sensitivities, allergies, and dietary restrictions. Belmont Day is a nut-aware campus—no food containing nuts or peanuts, or traces of nuts or peanuts, are served. The varied menus also reflect cultural diversity and inspire curiosity about customs, flavors, and the joy that food brings to people around the world.
Growth, Development, and Belonging
Middle school is not an easy time. So much in life is changing. Although the challenges to be faced and questions to be answered can feel daunting, students are supported in making thoughtful and caring decisions with curricula that connect health and wellness and social-emotional learning with topics of equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Growth, Development, and Belonging Mission Statement
At Belmont Day School, we recognize the dignity and worth of all human beings. We value health, wellness, equity, inclusion, and a sense of belonging as integral to our whole community. We are committed to ongoing parent, faculty, and student education.
Our approach is grounded in developmental theory, is inclusive of multiple perspectives, and is in line with national standards for health education and sex education. We are committed to establishing a safe environment for thoughtful discussion within a comprehensive curriculum.
We provide common language and accurate information to empower self-care, self-esteem, the development of healthy interpersonal relationships, and the skills needed for making responsible decisions throughout life.
Growth, development, and belonging education is a fluid partnership between school and family. It is integrated into all aspects of school life and is connected to the Belmont Day School core values of honesty, caring, joy, responsibility, respect, and excellence.
Mindfulness
Belmont Day School values presence, intentionality, thoughtfulness, and engagement. It is evident not only in our core values but in the ways people interact in the classrooms, hallways, and playing fields of our campus. Mindfulness is a tool that helps us ground these values in action and reflection. Belmont Day has partnered with WholeSchool Mindfulness to help integrate this essential skill and promote well-being in our community.
Mindfulness is woven into our growth, development, and belonging curriculum. Students engage in practices that help them hone their attention, learn how to respond proactively rather than reactively, and discover clarity and compassion in their relationships with themselves, others, and the world. Advisories periodically schedule additional practice opportunities that can be playful and purposeful for students to expand their toolkits. And athletics teams find the grounding they need on game day with breathing exercises.
Middle School Meeting
Once a week, middle school students gather as a community to share information and engage in activities geared toward building a strong middle school community. Students are also divided into smaller, cross-graded groups—led by one or more eighth graders—which participate together in a variety of activities throughout the year.
Orientation Trips
Each year, within the first several weeks of school, class bonds are forged through off-campus orientation activities. Sixth grade has a 3-day experience at Thompson Island Outward Bound. Seventh grade spends time at Cardigan Mountain in New Hampshire hiking, engaging in outdoor education, and strengthening group dynamics. Eighth grade students engage in adventure-based leadership development activities at Project Adventure.
Choice and Exploration
Model U.N., literary and art magazine, and pop knitting—are some of the club options available for middle schoolers. Comprised of mixed-grade groups, middle school clubs meet weekly and are led by faculty and staff who have expertise in or share a passion for a particular topic or activity. Clubs provide students with an opportunity to make choices—middle schoolers choose two club offerings to participate in each year. The diverse and exciting clubs at Belmont Day include:
- Literary and Art Magazine
- Model U.N.
- Book Club
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Games and Cards
- Pop Knitting
- Yearbook
- Gardening
- Games Around the World
- Postcard Club
- Embroidery
Greening and Sustainability
Environmental Mission Statement
Belmont Day School is committed to educating and encouraging all members of our school community to be responsible, respectful, and caring stewards of the environment. We will strive to teach and implement environmental best practices that will create a sustainable school environment and develop life-long skills that will prepare our members to make responsible environmental choices to sustain our local and global communities.
Belmont Day Garden — See How They Grow
The community garden at Belmont Day serves as an excellent teacher. It helps demonstrate lessons about the cycles of agriculture. Beyond that, students learn firsthand that the most gratifying achievements require planning, knowledge, commitment, effort, and patience.
We grow organic vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs. Students contribute to the effort, along with staff and parent volunteers. Our produce is not only used in our lunches but is donated to a food pantry and used in meals prepared for shelters. We use the garden across virtually all subjects and connect with academic curricula in many grade levels. A large pollinator garden, located directly alongside the vegetable garden, is filled with flowering plants and fruit trees to attract native pollinators such as bumblebees and other insects, butterflies, bats, and birds. Two Warre beehives feature observation windows and a design that allows bees to draw out their own honeycomb. Students help to maintain the hives and harvest the honey. The gardens and beehives serve as a lovely metaphor for our school, demonstrating that together, with attentiveness and industry, caring, and collaboration, we can achieve impressive results.
Community Initiatives
- Classroom and lunchroom composting
- Student energy conservation patrol
- School-wide recycling
- Eliminating the use of bottled water
- Vehicle idling awareness campaign
- Farm-to-school program
- Environmental community service opportunities for families
Solar Power
An 80 kW solar array is situated on the roof of the Barn and feeds directly into the building. It is expected that the array will provide up to 15% of the Barn’s electrical needs. The array is an exciting addition to our curriculum work in sustainability. Students will explore the design, electronics, and engineering of solar panels track the energy savings provided by solar power, and learn about other ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Check out our Solar Kiosk for a live glimpse at the daily energy production and the collateral environmental savings and benefits produced by this installation.
