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. We were also excited to open our school to the community for numerous family engagement events.
PMS is proud to be a Paideia Seminar Nationally Certified School. With our continued partnership with the Paideia Center, we are able to provide students with rich learning opportunities to practice critical thinking and communication skills. 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 reflecting and writing about the text. Through this active learning, students and staff participated in Paideia Socratic seminars that provided access to complex texts. This work increased our student-to-student dialogue and a deeper understanding of content.
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. This year PMS was able to again offer an afterschool program at no cost to families. This program served 40 students and focused on student individual academic needs. 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 work to build powerful relationships during our Advocacy structure. We are proud of the work we have done during this time to develop our students’ social-emotional learning. Teachers utilized the Kindness in the Classroom curriculum to teach the kindness concepts of respect, caring, inclusiveness, integrity, responsibility and courage.
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 of the hard work of our counseling department. The Pelion Middle Counseling department is one of only three RAMP certified middle school 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. Our STEM teacher was awarded the Michelin Vex Robotics Grant and the SC Council on Competitiveness STEM Grant. These grants were used to purchase new Vex robotics equipment for our Pelion Middle robotics team and to strengthen the STEM curriculum by integrating Vex robotics into instruction. This year we also had several of our performing arts and visual arts students who were also honored by being accepted into District Honors band, chorus, orchestra, and art.
Pelion Middle students were able to participate in a variety of clubs and sports offerings. Our award-winning Future Farmers of America (FFA) represented us well in dairy handling and horse evaluation career development events, winning top middle school in both. The PMS FFA chapter also received a Superior National Chapter Award and the 100% Membership Award. We are equally proud of our archery club’s growth and success. They placed first in state in Bullseye and second in state in IBO/3D. PMS was excited to continue to expand our club offerings by adding pep squad and soccer club this year.
We are proud of our faculty and students and all their accomplishments this year. We know that the support of our families and community members were key to our accomplishments this school year.
Jessica Keisler, Principal
Tabitha Causey, SIC Chair
