Located in the southern part of Greenville County, Ralph Chandler Middle School serves approximately 750 middle school aged children in grades six through eight. The school’s namesake, Ralph Chandler, believed that the residents of rural Greenville County deserved equal access to remarkable and memorable educational experiences just as their counterparts in more populated areas of the district. This institution honors that legacy by providing exemplary learning opportunities in a safe and clean environment where all students can be proficient learners and committed citizens. Ralph Chandler Middle School helps all students with the development of world class skills as well as life and career characteristics, as outlined in the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. We continue to provide a community-centered environment focused on learning and academic achievement in addition to student health and wellness. To that end, our staff works collaboratively to provide students with rigorous, hands-on learning experiences. Our students consistently meet or exceed district and state expectations on norm-referenced and state assessments.
Academic Excellence:
Ralph Chandler Middle School is a high-performing school; challenging middle grades students to use their minds well and strive to achieve academic excellence. All students are expected to meet high academic standards. Expectations are clear for students and parents; they are communicated out in a variety of ways including published course syllabi, weekly team newsletters, individual emails from teachers and posts in Google Classroom. Google Classroom posts contain rubrics, deadlines, and expectations for longer term projects and assignments. In order to maintain high standards, teachers provide students with exemplars of high quality work on an ongoing basis. Based upon exemplars, students are asked to revise their work after receiving targeted feedback to demonstrate mastery. In order to achieve the goals of academic excellence and accelerating student achievement, instructional strategies vary widely to include a plethora of challenging and engaging activities. These activities are clearly related to the grade level standards, concepts and skills being taught. Direct instruction is brief to allow space and time for collaborative learning groupings, which have been explicitly taught accountable talk strategies and collaborative discourse. We encourage inquiry, project based learning, hands-on, real-world connected, and STEM/STEAM focus tasks in all content areas. When students are academically successful, we celebrate. When students are academically challenged, we unite and support. We can do this through the use of widespread formative assessment and learning software monitoring tools. These tools use data to determine what each student has learned and what they still need to learn. For students with an individualized education plan, the co-teaching/inclusion model is available to expose them to grade level content with the support of a special education teacher in real-time. We offer Read180 special education students who demonstrate deficiencies in reading skills. All teachers are available before and after school for tutoring for a minimum of 1.5 hours weekly upon requested.
Developmental Responsiveness:
Ralph Chandler Middle School is a high-performing school that is sensitive to the unique developmental challenges of early adolescence. The staff creates a personalized environment that supports each student’s intellectual, ethical, social, and physical development. Every student on every team has an advocate, which is a teacher on their team who has chosen to serve as their mentor through their school year. These advocates work hard to build trust and rapport with each student, they will go out of their way to make sure that students feel included, connected and supported.
In addition to the core academics, students enjoy meaningful involvement in a thriving performing arts program including band, strings, chorus and drama. Student performances take place multiple times per year to a packed house of family and community members. Community involvement with the music program is exceptional. Moreover, course offerings in visual art, business technology, creative writing, personal finance and Spanish afford students an opportunity to express themselves in creative ways.
Students are provided multiple opportunities to explore a rich variety of topics and interests in order to develop their identity, learn about their strengths, discover and demonstrate their competence and plan for their futures.
Social Equity:
Ralph Chandler Middle School is a high performing, socially equitable, democratic and fair middle school focused on providing every student with high-quality teachers, resources, learning opportunities and support. We keep positive options open for all students. To the fullest extent possible, all students, including English learners, students with disabilities, gifted and honors students, participate in heterogeneous classes with high academic and behavioral expectations. Teachers and administrators are committed to helping each student produce proficient work. To promote social equity in all corners of our learning community, students are encouraged to positively impact their world in a variety of ways. For example, our students rally around a number of service learning opportunities such as the Giving Tree, Breakfast Club, the Linus Project, Souls for Shoes and other quarterly clubs that have a focus on community service work. These clubs are available for all students to sign up for and teachers help guide student focus.
Organizational Structures:
Ralph Chandler Middle School is a high-performing learning organization that has established norms, structures and organizational arrangements to support and sustain a trajectory toward excellence. A shared vision of what a high-performing school is and does drives every facet of school change. RCMS is a community of practice, deeply devoted to content-rich professional learning in which experimentation and the opportunity for reflection are the norm. The school staff holds itself accountable for student success. PLCs collect, analyze and use data as a basis for making decisions. These decisions are derived from common formative assessment data to benchmark achievement data. The faculty uses all available data to inform next steps in instruction and all of this work is student-centered at its core.
Our community offers tremendous support to our school. Parents attend school events, serve on the SIC, PTSA and work diligently to develop two-way communication with school staff. We aim to keep parents and the community informed and involved as we continue to create learning experiences that are challenging, meaningful and engaging for students.
Jeff Jenkins, Principal
Beth Spence, SIC Chair
