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Welcome to Collins Middle School!

Looking Forward and What to Expect for the 2023-2024 School Year

As we lead up to a new school year, we have our sights set on an exciting learning experience at Collins Middle School for the 2023-24 school year. We have made a commitment and are dedicating our time to enhancing the middle school experience at Collins. Part of this strategic process has included input and feedback from many stakeholders-staff, families, students, school committee members, and community partners. Our stakeholders teamed up to form the Reimagining Middle School Task Force to develop a vision and “Portrait of a Middle School Graduate,” 

Powered by relationships, trust, and a sense of belonging, we expect middle school students to develop their identity, skills & mindsets so that they are empowered to navigate their learning, chart their course & engage with their community, and reach their academic and life potential.  

We want all of our students to embody this portrait as they move through middle school on their journey to high school.  In order to do this, we must come together as a school community to hold a shared mindset and core values to anchor our collective efforts. Over the last few months, we have developed a series of values that will set our direction in the coming year.  Everything we do needs to live within the following core values:    

Courage – Mutual Respect – Shared Responsibility

The Collins community will define what these values mean and how they manifest themselves in the actions of both the adults and young people in our community. Our staff launched this process at a recent professional development session, and our students will have the opportunity to offer their input at summer orientation. 

To ensure a successful upcoming school year, I wanted to share some important commitments and actions we plan to take to enhance the student experience.  Many of these efforts are building from the historical successes at Collins, learned lessons from the Pilot Program, and recommendations from the Middle School Task Force. 

To create a sense of belonging and a safe learning community we will commit to…

• Clear and consistent expectations for student readiness
• Distributed leadership model to create smaller learning communities throughout the school to provide student and teacher support
• Enhanced communication to families via weekly clusters newsletters 
• Opportunities for personalized learning through workshop models 

To provide experiences for students to learn real-world skills…

• Through Project Lead The Way, we will expand our STEM coursework. Throughout their career at Collins, students will be exposed to Design and Modeling, Robotics and Automation, and Energy in the Environment.
• 7th and 8th-grade students will have access to Career Technical Education coursework in Medical Science, Construction, and Early Education.
• Students will experience 2-3 learning experiences outside of the classroom each trimester. 
• Students will be a part of a School-Wide House System to build relationships throughout the CMS community. Social Justice standards will integrate into Town Hall content and activities. 
• Task-based collaboration and team building regularly through Design Studio, beginning with Orientation in August.

To build consistent processes for students to be a part of their learning experiences.

• Student Leadership Team to volunteer an hour once a week throughout the summer to be a part of the planning process for 2023-24
• Implement a feedback routine for students to progress and monitor their academic and social/emotional goals.
• Building on the stronger cluster model, teams can design and implement more regular opportunities for feedback to students, building in more consistent and routine culture-building opportunities. 
• Create Connect for Success model from the high school to create support systems to support at-risk or struggling learners

We look forward to growing our two-way partnership with our CMS community throughout the summer and into next year.