All About
Manhattan Middle School
of Arts and Academics
Manhattan Middle School of Arts and Academics provides an inclusive, safe, and dynamic learning environment for students from both the neighborhood and the entire district. Our challenging academic program is supported not only by an infusion of the arts, but also an integrated curriculum, exploratory classes, small reading and writing classes, and math support classes. In the arts, students choose from dance, visual arts, theater, band, orchestra, and choir. During the school day, students may participate in a two period block of an art focus or a traditional one period elective arts class.
WHAT MAKES MANHATTAN UNIQUE?
ARTS FOCUS PROGRAM
All Art focus classes are based on DBAE (Discipline Based Arts Education) focusing on aesthetics, art history, art criticism and performance-Arts Focus- music, theatre, dance, visual. All classes are offered as electives or as Focus classes, meeting for ninety minutes daily.
FEASABILITY STUDY FOR THE MIDDLE YEARS
International Baccalaureate (IB)
The Middle Years Programme (MYP) offers an approach to teaching and learning that embraces yet transcends the focus on traditional school subjects. While insisting upon thorough study of the various disciplines, the MYP accentuates the interrelatedness of them and so advances a holistic view of learning. This perspective asks the student to consider issues and problems in their widest scope and to realize that good solutions often draw upon insights one has acquired from many sources. This means helping students recognize relationships between school subjects and the world outside, and learn to combine relevant knowledge, experience and critical thinking to solve authentic problems.
IB Areas or Interaction
Five broad areas known as areas of interaction give the MYP curriculum its distinctive core and reflect the programme’s focus on students’ intellectual and social development. These are not academic subjects like the specific disciplines, but rather are common perspectives embedded within and visible across academic subjects. They provide a framework of learning, allowing connections among the subjects themselves.
The five areas of interaction are the following:
• APPROACHES TO LEARNING
How do I learn best? How do I know? How do I communicate my understanding?
• COMMUNITY AND SERVICE
How do we live in relation to each other? How can I contribute to the community? How can I help others?
• HOMO FABER
Why and how do we create? What are the consequences?
• ENVIRONMENT
Where do we live? What resources do we have or need? What are my responsibilities?
• HEALTH AND SOCIAL EDUCATION
How do I think and act? How am I changing? How can I look after myself and others?
All BVSD Middle Schools offer the following core classes.
Manhattan delivers these classes within the framework of IB
Language A: the student’s best language, usually the school’s language of instruction.
Language B: an additional modern language learned at school.
Humanities: history, geography, social studies.
Sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, life science.
Mathematics
Arts: Arts Focus Curriculum.
Physical education: one course including a wide
range of physical activities.
Technology: computer and design technology.
HIGHLIGHTING OUR STAFF
Our staff has many accomplishments, among teachers at Manhattan we have professionals who have earned. . .
Post-graduate degrees and endorsements
Best Should Teach Award by the University of Colorado.
Wrote and administered two National Science Foundation grants.
National Board certification
Credits as a playwright
Credits as stage and screen actors
Credits as a published poet
A seat on the Executive Board of ColoradoLanguage Arts Society
Certification for Trainer for Gurian Institute
Chairperson of statewide storytelling contest
Membership to the National Writing Project
