Dunder Mifflin:
Our Philosophy
At Dunder Mifflin Middle School, we aspire to create a developmentally responsive environment for all students.​
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What is 'Developmentally Responsive?
Developmentally responsive entails that our school tailors to the needs of every student that walks into our doors. Adolescents, occurring between ages ten to fourteen, is a time of growth for students in many categories. These categories of growth are seen in students physically, socially, emotionally, morally, culturally, and intellectually. Below are the ways that we ensure that every student is being fostered in growth during their time attending Dunder Mifflin.
We stand by the Association for Middle Level Education’s statement, This We Believe, when it comes to providing Students with a developmentally responsive curriculum. We will ensure that students are given challenging, empowering, and equitable curriculum in every discipline and class scheduled throughout the school day.
Establish Structures: Teaming and Advisory
As a middle school, we believe that it is necessary that there is a strong force behind teacher teaming. With teaming, we will ensure that students are being instructed on a team basis, and students will be familiarized with their set teams. With this, we believe that students will receive organization and flow to their curriculum that is bridged with each core subject. Additionally, we feel as if advisory is an essential component for students to mold into knowledgeable, reflective, caring, ethical, and contributing members of society. Students need support in their development in all areas relevant to the adolescent years, which will be fostered in our advisory periods. All certified educators in our school will take part in advisory, which only further enhances our emphasis on the importance of community in our middle school. Engaging students in curriculum significant to their lifelong learning is our overall goal with both our ideas behind teaming and advisory.
Incorporating interdisciplinary units and flexible grouping opportunities
Through teaming, we ensure that students will have the opportunity to be provided with curriculum that bridges together separate disciplines around common themes, issues, or problems. Although it may seem traditional for Social Studies and English Language Arts to easily link together to create intertwining unit plans, we believe that it should not stop there. Through teaming, we push our teachers to creatively link disciplines on all parts. For instance, Ms. Brown (math) and Ms. Harris (social studies), both part of the same team for 8th grade, decided that it would be beneficial to incorporate their disciplines to jumpstart a unit on the Stock Market Crash of 1929. This provided a creative way for students to incorporate both math and social studies curriculum in one unit plan.
Building service learning and community partnerships
Building an environment of service learning and community partnerships is essential for the developing adolescent. Students must be provided with learning that is relevant, challenging, integrative, and exploratory due to their rapid growth socially, morally, culturally, and cognitively. We believe that through community involvement, students will grow in their community awareness and involvement. This will be achieved through service learning, which will include local volunteer work for each grade level. Community partnerships will also be made as advisory teachers provide students with a minimum of two guest speakers per school year. This allows students to hear from prominent figures in the community while students also learn how they may become more involved.
Providing multiple alternative assessment avenues
Students will be assessed on multiple platforms. While it is essential for students be guided for the preparation of required testing, we believe that students should be given the opportunity to be assessed through multiple outlets. To start, we ensure that every class period should be guided with an organized lesson plan that students, parents, and teachers will all be familiar with throughout the school year. Students will be assessed on their engagement in the lesson of the day through participation, warm-up activities (bell ringers), and/or conclusion activities (exit slips). Students will also be assessed through end of unit final products, which may be in the form of exams, projects, portfolios, or any other creative assignment formulated by our staff. Our goal is for students to be given options for their assessment of knowledge they have formulated throughout units.
Supporting character development of 10-14 (sometimes 15) year olds transitioning between elementary and high school experiences
Middle school students are entering and exiting a time in their lives that is developmentally demanding on many levels. We want students to be aware of these changes that they will be going through at this time in their lives. As seen through the statements above, it is certain that our school will highlight the development of our adolescent students on all levels. This includes being aware of their changes in physical, social, emotional, moral, cultural, and cognitive development. Discussions on these changes will be incorporated into the curriculum and highlighted during advisory periods.