Pelion Middle School is helping all students develop the World-Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by providing a learning environment that embodies a holistic approach to education that includes research-based instructional best practices, a focus on social-emotional learning and opportunities for students to explore other areas of interests through clubs, electives and arts. Although PMS faced another challenging year including a five-day shift to e-learning due to high COVID-19 numbers and numerous staff and students in quarantine, we are proud of the resilience of our students and staff. We were also excited to be able to invite families into our building for face-to-face events in November to dedicate our new school, then again at the end of the year for eighth grade celebrations, concerts and family engagement nights.
In order to provide students with learning opportunities to practice critical thinking and communication skills, PMS continued a partnership with the Paideia Center. The Paideia Seminar Cycle consists of students reading and analyzing a shared text, engaging in meaningful conversations about the text with their peers and, finally, through this active learning, students and staff participate in Paideia Socratic seminars that provide access to complex texts. This work increased our student-to-student dialogue and a deeper understanding of content. We are incredibly excited to have achieved the status of Paideia Seminar Nationally Certified School, which makes us one of 13 schools in the United States to have this distinction.
PMS is committed to providing the structures necessary to help each student achieve more. We employ a push-in model for Response to Intervention for qualifying students in both English language arts and math to ensure that student needs are being met in the general education setting. Through the implementation of the workshop model, we maximize student-learning opportunities and provide timely, meaningful feedback and assessment through which to adjust instruction and enrich learning experiences across content areas. Our school’s implementation of the Lucy Calkins Units of Study further provides us with the necessary tools and resources to collaborate, remediate instruction and enrich as necessary within our ELA classrooms.
This year, students and teachers worked to build powerful relationships during our Advocacy structure. We are proud of the work we have done during this time to develop our student’s social-emotional learning. Our sixth grade advocacy teachers piloted the “In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time” curriculum, which provides lessons that help students with expressing their feelings, reducing impulsive behavior, dealing with conflict and stress, increasing empathy and improving teamwork among other positive behaviors. Teachers received ongoing professional development throughout the year as they implemented this curriculum.
Our counseling department further supported our school’s commitment to improving student's social-emotional development by providing SEL classroom lessons and hosting small-group sessions for students in addition to their one-on-one sessions with students. We are incredibly proud that the hard work of our counseling department was honored this year with the status conferred of a Recognized ASCA Model Program (RAMP). We are one of only 11 RAMP-certified programs in South Carolina. In order to earn this distinction, a counseling program must successfully implement the ASCA National Model framework and show evidence of direct and indirect services to students, program planning and improved student outcomes in the school counseling program.
PMS students are also provided opportunities to gain world-class skills through a variety of elective offerings including STEM, agriculture science, computer science, world languages, visual and performing arts, and physical education. This year we had six students selected for District Honors art. Additionally two of our students had art work featured on the Pelion Peanut Party T-shirt, commemorating this annual festival held in Pelion, S.C. Several of our performing arts students were honored this year with acceptance into District Honors band, chorus and orchestra. Our band and orchestra programs were able to double their sixth grade enrollment numbers after a very challenging COVID-19 year. Our orchestra teacher also received a $3,000 grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission. We were equally excited to have a group of French 1 students create a video encouraging people to visit a French-speaking country other than France and enter it into a contest. Their video about Côte d'Ivoire won them Honorable Mention as well as a cash prize.
This year PMS students were able to participate in a variety of clubs. Our award-winning Future Farmers of America Club represented us well in floriculture, livestock judging and conducting chapter development events. Additionally, our FFA was able to attend Nationals in Indianapolis for a state chapter award. PMS was also able to introduce several new clubs this year, including archery, dance and gaming. We are very proud of our archery club as they made it to nationals in their inaugural year. Our dance club, instructed by a Pelion High School senior and one of our eighth grade students, put on a recital for students and families.
We are proud of our faculty and students and all their accomplishments this school year. We appreciate the support of our families and community members as we navigated this challenging year.
Michael Stacey, Interim Principal
Tabitha Causey, SIC Chair
