Compass Montessori Junior High
A two-year academic cycle for 7th and 8th-year students
Compass Montessori Junior High empowers each student to imagine their direction in life as they embark on their journey from adolescence to adulthood. Our curriculum offers a wealth of information, ideas, and experiences that foster an ever-expanding concept of self and community. Students explore their unique interests and challenge themselves to consider how diverse individuals, communities, and cultures perceive and engage with one another. This method requires authentic experiences with adult mentors engaged in real work, in the real world -- in Traverse City and across the country.
More Than a Transition, More Like a Transformation.
History, science, literature, mathematics, the arts, and language weave together to provide students with an authentic understanding of the complex world they will occupy and contribute to as independent-thinking citizens of our planet. In pursuit of authentic understanding, students experience firsthand a diversity of perspectives and cultures, as they explore professions and occupations that comprise many sectors of society such as government, business, nonprofit, social service, and environmental organizations.
Real World Experiences
More Than an Education, More Like an Experience.
Workshops follow the three-period lesson structure. First, the introduction of the topic often happens during a field trip, interactive presentation, or immersive activity. Once engaged in the topic, the second period empowers students to choose a focus and dive as deeply into their research as their curiosity and imaginations take them. During the third period, students share the results of their investigations. Throughout the workshop, adults provide support and guidance.
History Class
More Than a Classroom, More Like a Community.
Students have regular excursions throughout Traverse City, the woods, meadows, wetlands, and waterways of Northwest Lower Michigan. Multi-day trips and day-long field excursions take students throughout Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. Extended trips explore Detroit, Chicago, South Florida, Washington D.C., Atlanta, GA, and Birmingham and Montgomery, AL. History is explored where it happened. Science is experienced hands-on and in context. All learning is aided, interpreted, and made meaningful through the arts, mathematics, and the written and spoken word. Students are encouraged and empowered to examine, interpret, and share what they are learning with support from teachers, mentors, and professionals.
Science Lab
More Than being Included, More Like Belonging.
Compass Junior High students are stewards of the Timbers Recreation Area. They frequent this “Land Lab” every spring and autumn to collect and study water samples, map old-growth forests, write poetry, interview elders, identify plants and animals, and likely catch frogs and get soaking wet!
Before European colonization, the Anishinaabe used the land for hunting, fishing, and trapping, as well as a transportation corridor to and from Lake Mishigami. At the turn of the 19th century, Chicago’s meat magnate J. Ogden Armour built a sprawling estate, which became the Timbers Girl Scout Camp in the 1960s. Now part of the Long Lake Township park system, the 250-acre Timbers Recreation Area with its two inland ponds, old growth and early succession forests, abandoned farm fields, 2,000 feet of Long Lake shoreline, and numerous wetland areas make for the ideal living laboratory for studying both human and natural history.
Why Montessori for Adolescents
Workshops immerse students in learning about geology, botany, freshwater ecology, elections and government, ancient civilizations, applied technology, democratic movements, the American Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and Civil Rights.
Students receive direct daily instruction and time to practice math and Spanish language. Art, music, and physical education are integrated parts of the school year.
Throughout the program, students are introduced to adults with diverse backgrounds to learn about what they do in our local community and places as far north as the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula and as far south as Pigeon Key.
Free from rankings and grades, our students have real growth opportunities and learn at their own pace how to:
Be a part of an authentic, working community
Resolve conflict peacefully
Express and relate to their emotions
Discover their strengths
Lead and collaborate
Advocate for themselves and others
Conduct themselves in professional and social situations
Read literature, write essays, do algebra, speak Spanish, and manage responsibilities
When students graduate from our school, they have practiced skills and developed traits that support their personal growth and maturity as they transition to adulthood.
