ABSTRACT
Every year the principal visits the feeder schools to describe the school and its goals to prospective students. The school stands for something and it makes strong statements, both in words and practice, about its purposes. Despite a political and financial maelstrom that should make the school dysfunctional, Region 7 Middle School is an achieving school living out its original dream. It is a harmonious, integrated school that is constantly walking away with honors. Staff energies are expended more creatively in the independent course structure than in the standard curriculum. While there is considerable joint planning by sets at the beginning of each session and some block scheduling in one set, and while teachers meet for parent-student-teacher conferences as a set, there is no team teaching and very little interdisciplinary instruction. The history of the middle school has been a counterpoint of remarkable social and academic successes and political defeats.
