No one waits to learn.
Small class sizes in a school built for gifted learners means no one gets lost in a crowd…and no one waits to learn. Every student is seen as an individual, met where they are, and challenged and supported appropriately.
Teachers build strong, meaningful relationships with each student, and students gain a strong sense of community with their teachers and their peers.
MIS stands for a culture of life-long curiosity and learning beyond the 13 years a student may spend here. Through elements of student choice, we can explore core content beyond the basics and frame its application to real-world scenarios and students' specific interests and questions.
Not waiting to learn does not mean moving through learning more quickly. We work to re-frame the idea of learning beyond the concrete binary of "learning" and "mastered" to add more depth over breadth and acknowledge that there is always something new to learn or a new way to deepen or apply our current understanding.
Instead of students waiting passively at their desks for their teachers to hand them work in the next topic of a sequence of skills, students have agency and responsibility in their learning as we pursue topics to greater depths and examine the "why" behind what we learn and not just the "what's next."
The MIS approach to Individualized Instruction
MIS's teachers offer a multi-modal approach to instruction making sure that content is accessible through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic methods. In this way, all students have easy access to learning that makes sense to them, but they are also pushed to strengthen their processing skills in other modes. Recent research on brain-based learning indicates that a varied approach is more effective than learning in a single style, even if there is an affinity for one style over the other.
If your child's learning style needs specific accommodations, we are also happy to create a learning profile outlining the implementation of those strategies. That process starts with the submission of an educational psychological evaluation or sometimes with recommendations from a therapist or other doctor. If your child's learning needs intervention-level support, we can host the interventionist (SLP, OT, etc) you acquire at school and collaborate to embed the services within the school day.
Both student and teacher strengths and interests lead us to new discoveries as we explore content and dive deeper.
Our agile approach to curriculum design means that when Putin suddenly invades Ukraine, we can pivot at the drop of a dime to address the issues affecting our world right now.
“It was serendipity, or perhaps just a sequence of small, lucky events that led us to Midtown International School. My daughter was in the fourth grade at our local elementary school. She was miserable. Academically, it was the same old thing…worksheets and test prep. On paper, my daughter was excelling: pretty much all “A’s” and very high scores on all manner of standardized testing. However, she was bored and it showed; her teachers complained that she appeared to be daydreaming and that she seemed un-engaged from her classmates.
This environment is what my daughter would love! Being an active participant in learning her subjects, seeing how those subjects relate to each other, and seeing how learning could be interesting and relevant to her own life. By the time they had finished describing the student experience, from accommodations for different learning styles to specific plans for a hands on science experience, immersion in three languages, and commitment to visual arts, music, and environmental issues, I knew in my gut that this would be a wonderful environment for my child.”
— MIS Parent