Middle School Uses Half Day to Build Community

French International Middle School uses half days throughout the year to foster a culture of collaboration and belonging through Community Days! Utilizing their Event Design class, our eighth-grade students expertly plan and organize this exciting day, fostering meaningful connections across all middle school grade levels. The November 7 Community Day was packed with engaging activities and offered eighth graders an opportunity to present their community projects.

Service is part of the IB philosophy of making an impact in your own community. To cultivate this, students participated in a variety of activities centered around the theme of "service as action." The sixth graders spent time working in the forest, helping clear trails and clean the outdoor learning spaces. Another particularly powerful activity involved students learning directly from experts and representatives from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), bringing essential, real-world knowledge right into our classrooms and fostering important conversation.

The morning's community building activities were structured around five key challenges: Lights, Camera, Respond!, a competitive response task designed to test quick wit and fast action; Spaghetti Skyscrapers, a challenge where teams used critical thinking to help build strategic inquiry; Balloon Dash, an energetic exercise requiring quick decisions and nimble, active participation; The Great Float-Off, a creative challenge that tasked students with inventing novel solutions to solve a puzzle; and Pass it Fast, helping students develop cohesion and reflection skills. 

Community Day was a success, proving that when our students and staff work together, we can build stronger relationships, tackle complex challenges, and make a real difference.