Upper School

As at every level, MSR seeks to remove the artificial barriers that tend to separate “school work” from its authentic context — life!

While your student masters all the traditional subjects through our interdisciplinary curriculum at MSR, they also apply their academic learning through real-world projects (which, as life experience teaches us, are by nature interdisciplinary, personal, and interpersonal), so that every school day helps them grow their intellect, develop a humanity, and strengthen his sense of autonomy.

Take, for instance, our students’ yearlong “Engineering Structures” project. We begin not with a set of geometry theorems to practice, architectural histories to study, and physics laws to memorize. We begin by asking your student to interpret the idea of structure. In Art they plan and build a model of a house, engaging their full imagination and interest. In Math, they apply ratios and geometrical formulas to determine square areas and circumferences of their proposed structure — cubes, cylinders, ellipses, and irregular polygons — and the measurements of his interior and exterior walls. In Humanities, they study scale and learn to read contour maps. Where is the best place to build? What are the traditions, customs, and materials considerations of building on this or that piece of land? How will their house affect the neighborhood, energy resources, or existing animal habitats? They examine the earth’s terrain and learn about erosion and other natural forces that affect the environment and creates models of the land and the home they've designed. In Science, they examine the structural integrity inherent in specific materials, testing samples of timber, brick, cement, stone, and metals in order to determine their load capacity and durability.

And learning isn’t limited to the usual academic subject areas. Consider just a few of the supra-academic skillsets your student develops in this single project. They calculate the real-world costs of their building project, balancing his dream outcomes with his practical limitations and employing self-discipline, organization, and prioritization. They apply design thinking to creative problem-solving. They consult with experts, exercising personal initiative and self-confidence. They consider the competing needs and desires of friends, family, and community and reconciles them with their own values, preferences, and ideas, developing empathy and skills in diplomacy and conflict resolution. They manage the entire complex, long-term project, gaining self-awareness and practicing collaboration, planning, and persistence.

In other words, in MSR’s Upper School, your student begins to master the crucial-to-happiness life skills that many young people authentically encounter for the first time post-college. And they gain this experience in ways that fully integrate with and strengthen their academic studies.

Through Intersessions, internships, community service, the college search and application process, and other opportunities for learning beyond the classroom, your student develops essential life skills, building competence and confidence (not to mention their résumé!) in preparation for their next experiences in college and beyond. These distinctive aspects of our program — deeply integrated with academic learning in traditional subject areas — exemplify the Third Plane principles of the Montessori approach.

INTERSESSIONS

Twice a year the regular curriculum pauses for Intersession, a one-week period when students — accompanied by MSR teachers, staff members, and sometimes parents — participate in full-immersion, interdisciplinary studies. Intersessions introduce your student to new experiences, places, people, and ideas that spark what often become lifelong passions. Some are offered year after year, while others are newly designed to meet students’ unique interests.

A sampling of Upper School Intersession projects:

• Literary Journal – Research the lit mag market (both print and online), develop your own criteria for what makes a successful literary magazine, then create, solicit, and evaluate content for our very own publication, gaining practical experience in editing, layout, and production, as well as in publicizing and promoting the finished product.
• Robotics – Explore the origins, applications, and future of robotics and then put the fundamentals of robot mechanisms and dynamics into action! Collaboratively design, build, and program robots that respond to light, motion, sound, or other human-machine interfaces.
• App Design – Create an engaging mobile app design from start to finish, working through the design thinking process to develop and explore your original app idea and building the technical proficiency and planning skills that take your idea to finished product.
• Food Blog – Learn about all that goes into starting and running a successful blog business. What are the best blog platforms? How do you brand your blog? How do you increase traffic with SEO? How can you generate income? Together, students write, design, photograph, code, market, and — oh, yeah! — cook for their own food blog.
• Photography – Practice the art and science of photography in the digital age! You learn the timeless principles of lighting, composition, and perspective and also the technical tools for controlling exposure, shutter speed, aperture, and photo editing.

REAL-WORLD INTERNSHIPS

The Triangle is home to an abundance of colleges, universities, nonprofits, and business ventures of all shapes and sizes, from start-ups to publicly traded companies. (In fact, in 2014, Raleigh was named the number one city for business and careers by Forbes Magazine.) MSR makes the most of this concentration of highly regarded educational institutions and innovative businesses around us, offering our upper school students extraordinary opportunities for real-world collaborations and preparation.

While internships officially take place during the sophomore, junior and senior years, fours hours every Wednesday morning throughout the full school year, students actually begin preparing for them long before. During 9th grade they research their interests and passions, create their résumés, learn to network in their community, participate in mock interviews, and study professional skills to work seamlessly in business environments, ultimately securing their internships during their sophomore year.

Your student might participate in investigating the physics of diagnostic medicine in a radiology lab. They might join a team of technologists at an investment firm where they help develop a database, perform systems analysis, and design and develop new software applications. They might apply artistic skills in an internship with a marketing firm, assisting in the creation of real content for professional blogs, websites, and advertisements.

The internship program revolves around a three year cycle of internships which develop important real life professional skills, as well as provide important perspectives about our world.  Through three years of internship experiences students engage with different important facets of society.  In grade 10 students work in local non-profits and community service organizations to develop an understanding of our local communities interconnectedness and develop an ethos of service.  Grade 11 students take up engaging duties in local and state government offices and non-government organizations providing services to citizens.  The grade 11 internships provide students an up close view on the inner workings of government and local advocacy groups, connecting students directly with their studies in the IB Global Politics course.  The culminating internship experience transports grade 12 to professional offices, allowing students to explore career fields of personal interest and passion.  Seniors work in fields as diverse, as a local newsroom, law office, research laboratory, medical office, engineering firm, arts studio, and many more.

Through the internship experience — from preparation through performance —students not only gain valuable insight and experience in the world of work in their areas of interest, they have opportunities to apply their in-school theoretical learning to real-world situations and, conversely, to discover new motivations to fuel their academic inquiries.

This program perfectly exemplifies the Third Plane manifestation of the Montessori approach, combining mastery of academic learning and the development of essential life skills — preparing students fully for their next experiences in college and beyond.

SERVICE & LEADERSHIP

Many high schools offer community service and leadership programs. The MSR difference: Our entire program — for students from 15 months old to 18 years old — is designed to cultivate a sense of personal and social responsibility and genuine engagement in service. In other words, it’s not just something our students do, it’s a part of who we are together as a community.

Our mixed-age classrooms prepare students to work collaboratively, to master their lessons in order to teach them to others, to look for and foster skills and strengths in their peers, and to tend to their responsibilities and communities. As students advance at MSR, leadership opportunities exponentially increase. In Upper School, this means that your student not only practices leadership and service in their home and school communities; they are expected to begin making a positive impact in the wider world.

Starting in their freshman and sophomore years, students must complete 50 hours of service; in their junior and senior years, this grows to 75 hours of service per year. This work doesn’t merely signal the high value MSR places on service to the community, it plays a valuable role in galvanizing your student’s sense of self at this age, their sense of responsibility, generosity, and empathy. In both whole-school service activities and in service projects of their own design — improving marine habitats with an environmental organization, tutoring younger students, volunteering at a local hospital, organizing and participating in a charity run, building and populating new beehives, or other self-constructed commitment to community — your student forges a connection between their advancing talents and interests and his maturing self and social consciousness.

The Prepared Environment is an essential aspect of our pedagogy and curriculum at every level, specifically designed to meet the changing needs of your student as they grow and mature.

THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

In Upper School, we give your student the space they need — literally! Set amidst 40 acres of forest, streams, and wildlife, MSR’s Brier Creek Campus provides the ideal environment for students in the Third Plane of Development. Our natural surroundings provide expansive space for experiential learning and quiet reflections as your student performs scientific field studies, raises their environmental awareness, loses themself in a great book, stages an outdoor performance, or participates in community service.

Meanwhile, indoors, our Upper School forms the lively new hub of activity on our Brier Creek Campus. Our students inhabit and help create vibrant, start-up-like workspaces — classrooms, labs, and other collaborative areas — that support the natural flow of focused learning and vigorous discussion within and beyond the walls of the classroom.

THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

Your upper schooler doesn’t just need physical space, they need a social space that allows plenty of room for them to broaden their sense of identity and sphere of influence, where they can express opinions and ask hard questions, master healthy collaboration and participate in spirited competition with many different kinds of people.

At MSR, with a student-teacher ratio of 10:1, an average class size of 14 – 16, and a target cohort size of 75 students, we strive to balance the variety, diversity, and opportunities that greater numbers allow with the mentorship, free space, tailored learning experiences, and personal connections that only smaller class sizes can ensure. A well-balanced cohort means your student develops the capacity to appreciate and collaborate with different kinds of people, since it precludes the development of look, act, and think alike cliques so common in larger school environments. And not only does your student develop close relationships with an incredibly diverse group of peers, they also connect personally with his teachers who are his mentors, advisors, and friends.

In other words, your upper school student is surrounded by a community of adults and peers that meets their need for belonging, inspires them toward ever greater independence and personal discovery, and supports them as they navigate relationships and growing academic responsibilities.

THE INTANGIBLE ENVIRONMENT

Perhaps the most vital aspect of our learning environment, palpable the moment you arrive on campus, might also be the most difficult to describe. It’s not something you can easily point to: a place, a program, a policy. Rather, it’s a mindset — a community-wide belief in the capacity of our students to set and achieve their own goals; seek out big, meaningful challenges; both fail and succeed spectacularly and safely; and thus learn lessons so deeply that they inform their lives forever.

Over time in this environment, through both practice and osmosis, your student develops the MSR mindset, too. They learn to approach every challenge first with the assumption that they can do it — design a new app, research and write a biography, invest money in stocks, interpret an Old English poem, run 400 meters in under a minute (whatever “it” is) — with an ever growing sense of their strengths and how they learn best.

They may not know how yet, but will know from experience that they're capable of learning how to do anything, that with hard work and persistence no problem is too big to take on, and that grappling with complex, interesting problems is part of what brings joy and meaning to work and life.

MSR provides a truly complete course of study that integrates real-life learning into every subject area and every subject area into real-life learning.

This means that in English courses, your student annotates and dissects texts that intentionally connect with Humanities studies in ways that raise complex and engaging questions — around social change, progress, immigration, survival, peace and justice, the very nature of knowledge, language, and and creativity — and then pursues open-ended projects, driven by genuine and advancing questions: Why do we need laws and how do we create and change them? How do natural resources affect human migration and power dynamics? Why does art matter?

It means that in our science labs, they aren't just memorizing the facts; they're observing and exploring the interconnectedness of living and nonliving systems — from the structure of a single cell to the massive forces that move oceans, make mountains, and send ships into space. And as they master and exceed state and national standards, they also develop hypotheses based on their own burning questions — How long can a zip-line be? What forms of life can survive in total darkness? Can robots exhibit real emotions? — and then designs (rather than just performs) collaborative experiments, and reflects (rather than just reports) on the findings.

In short, the most memorable and meaningful learning happens when your student (and her questions, interests, and experiences) are at the center of a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum — even, or perhaps especially, as they tackle more advanced work. This kind of teaching requires the most masterful, most prepared, most actively engaged teachers.

Trained in our time-tested Montessori approach, MSR’s expert teachers plan for and continuously guide learning experiences that demand personal initiative and independent thinking from your student. And as they pursue answers to questions, teachers help to acquire the necessary knowledge and skillsets and then apply them in memorable and meaningful ways, supportively challenging toward ever deeper inquiry, genuine engagement, and constant skill-building.

Even as this approach builds adult independence and growing intellectual, social, and emotional sophistication in our upper schoolers, it also keeps alight the imagination and wonder-filled energy of youth, ensuring that your student learns to fuel (rather than replace) personal fascinations with ever more focused, vigorous, and disciplined study.

MSR students emerge thoroughly prepared for the all demands of a dynamic, competitive world. And it’s no wonder.

Your student has independently organized and managed their own complex academic projects, built  solar panels, researched and reflected on the nature of knowledge and creativity, secured a real-world internship and experienced real-world workplaces, written and directed a play, designed and launched a start-up, published a cookbook. They've practiced revolutionary thinking, voiced insightful opinions, collaborated with others toward a common goal, exerted newfound independence beyond home and school.

COLLEGE COUNSELING

The college search and application process is an integrated part of real-life learning — a major life event and a decision that challenges students to make use of all they’ve learned so far, intellectual, social, and emotional. That’s why college counseling begins in ninth grade at MSR, progressively preparing your student for application and admission to their best-fit colleges and universities.

College counselor 

Virtual College Visits

My son went on to a very competitive college after MSR, and he’s doing incredibly well — not a single blip academically. Even though classes are bigger, he has that mentorship mindset from MSR, so he’s connecting with his professors and loving his classes. I think the only thing he didn’t expect was how much he would miss it here. –MSR parent

CLICK HERE to download UPPER SCHOOL PROFILE

Clemson

Elon

Florida Southern

Georgia Tech

High Point

NC State

Queens University of Charlotte

Purdue

UNC Charlotte

UNC Wilmington

Villanova