Meadow Glen Middle School works to help all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing an active, safe, engaging, collaborative, and inclusive learning environment. MGMS focuses on educating the whole child and continually assesses its effectiveness by ensuring students have opportunities to demonstrate and reflect on the competencies outlined in the Lexington One Graduate Profile. Success in these areas is measured by students’ abilities to demonstrate proficiency according to state standards, an analysis of beautiful work that students create throughout the year, and self-reflections on students’ development with learning and using Graduate Profile compentencies. MGMS helps students gain world-class knowledge and skills by engaging students in active learning, fostering student leadership opportunities, and leveraging community partnerships. In addition, structures such as CREW, intentional structures to build character, student-engaged assessment practices, student-led Town Hall celebrations, student-led conferences, student passages, expeditions, and case studies all give students a variety of opportunities to utilize the world-class knowledge, skills, and life and career characteristics they need to be successful, productive graduates and citizens of South Carolina.
During the 2025–26 school year, under the theme, “Cook Up Success,” and emphasis on the school motto “Bring your best self and find the best in others,” MGMS experienced many successes as a school community: Meadow Glen Middle School was named a Project Adam Cardiac Safe School, the first middle school in the Midlands. This designation highlights our efforts to ensure we have a Cardiac Emergency Response team. At our last home basketball game before winter break, our school hosted the second annual Eli Adams Camp Kemo Basketball Game in honor of a former student who was diagnosed with childhood cancer. Our community raised over $1500 for Camp Kemo, an organization that provides services for families and patients navigating childhood cancer and blood disorders. Our school partnered with Mission Lexington and Relay for Life to serve our local community in various ways.
To support students’ mastery of world-class knowledge, MGMS continued to refine expeditions and case studies at each grade level. The sixth grade shifted their expedition entitled “Empathy Emporium,” which focused on adapting various games for students with different types of special needs. Students researched mental and physical disabilities and met with experts around needs such as hearing-loss and dyslexia. Students also created adaptations to enhance and improve games to be more inclusive for students with these needs. In seventh grade, students read A Long Walk to Water, which led them to update their expedition, “The Ripple Effect.” Students researched to bring awareness to issues in hopes to create a ripple effect of positivity into our community. Local experts shared their stories on how their passions create a positive ripple effect in their lives. Finally, eighth-grade students learned the power of narratives and learning the stories of resilience during their expedition entitled, “The Stories of Us.” Students heard from former students and other older teenagers that focused on their stories of resilience and connected them to stories of resilience heard in their US History Class. At a Celebration of Learning, students invited families to share out how their personal stories of resilience were inspired and connected to these two events.
To help students develop strong life and career skills, MGMS continued to develop and strengthen the structure of CREW and help students be “resilient and responsible learners who communicate and collaborate with kindness.” The MGMS CREW worked together to strengthen the scope and sequence of meaningful lessons tying together the learning and application of the Lexington 1 Graduate Profile. This CREW design team also provided support for Student Led Conferences and Passages. These two structures allowed students to reflect on their learning and use of the Graduate Profile Competencies, as well as share their learning with an authentic audience of parents, teachers, and community members.
In addition to learning and leadership opportunities in the core classroom and CREW, MGMS students are provided with extracurricular outlets and experiences through exploratory classes to support the development of these skills. For example, the Robotics program at MGMS creates a space for students to research real-world problems that affect their community and collaboratively find solutions. This year, five MGMS Robotics teams competed, with two teams advancing to international competitions in Massachusetts and Canada. We are also proud of our Volleyball team who won the Lexington 10 Championship, and our Cheer team who were Debbie Rogers Co-Ed Champions.
In December, the MGMS musical theater program presented Cinderella with performances for parents, families, and our neighboring elementary school students. In March, the MGMS band students earned an Excellent rating and our MGMS Orchestra earned a Superior Rating on their respective concert performance assessments. The MGMS Dance Company celebrated an undefeated season and came in first at the State Dance Team Championship.
Whether through service, expedition, CREW, or the work of inclusion, MGMS students demonstrated across the board that they are thriving and preparing to create a better world.
Principal Brian Lim, and SIC Chairperson Jennifer Gessner
