Classroom Portrait
Outside Views:

Rockbridge County is a relatively small county with only around 20000 residents. The two largest cities, Lexington and Buena Vista, are enclaved within the county. What this means for the students of the county is that there are separate school systems for the county and for the city schools. This means that funding for the schools is coming from the county or the city. While schools like Maury River are within the boundaries of Lexington, they are still a county school. All the students from the relatively geographically large county are bused into a central school. However, The county and city work together to create a shared high school for students within the geographical bounds of the county.

According to school quality of Virginia, they rate Maury River Middle school with a level one science achievement. This entails that Maury River prepares their students in the sciences which allows for groups such as the Eagle Academy to develop and discuss ideas such as the environment and formulate solutions that would help the society adapt and fix necessary areas to improve the environment around them. Eagle Academy was able to form because of the level one education the Maury River is providing.

Inside Views:

We have spent the beginning of semester with a group of middle schoolers who decided they wanted to help the environment. These kids, although they are not the best academically, they are the best when it comes to thinking aloud and discussions. These are some of the brightest kids we have ever met. They developed ideas that inspired thought and deep conversations on how to improve their environment. Project Based Learning has really allowed the students to think for themselves and gather as one to develop ideas that would and possibly bring change to a society. We believe that all institutions across the country should think about and at least look into what project based learning is.

If we had PBL during our time during elementary and middle school it would have been better at academic thinking. PBL from our experiences so far enables students to gather into groups and think about an issue and develop solutions that would fix what the problem is.

It has allowed for students in our classroom to take ownership of their own learning from their class charter of shared values to their participation in NEST FEST (See Lexington News Gazette article) with all the other middle schoolers.