The curriculum in the junior and senior years challenges students to engage with ideas more deeply and relate to their peers more collegially.
Juniors take an important step up to an appropriately more challenging academic program that demands more independent student responsibility, maturity and intellectual sophistication.
Highlights of the Junior Year
Student-Advisory Role
Juniors are able to choose their advisor to a greater extent than younger students. Often students remain with the same advisor for both junior and senior years, enabling them to deepen the relationship between student and advisor.
Leadership Positions
Many juniors take on community leadership roles whether through athletics, drama, debate, journalism, yearbook, or a variety of student organizations.
College Search Process
During the fall semester the college counselors begin to provide students with general advice and information during class meetings and small-group student meetings. The MISP College Fair will be held at SPA on Sunday, October 5, 2008. Students and their parents attend a January College Evening kick-off event featuring guest speakers. Throughout the spring semester college counselors meet individually with students and families to begin to explore student interests, college possibilities, and application guidelines.
Junior Retreat
The Junior Retreat, a two-night overnight in mid-April, truly is a rite of passage. For each junior class this retreat has been a powerful experience, serving to help students bond as class and look ahead to their role as seniors in the coming year. Rituals on the Junior Retreat include a letter from parents, selecting the sequence for Senior Speeches, and a candlelight ceremony at which students can speak authentically to their peers. Soon after returning from the Junior Retreat the seniors leave campus to pursue their Senior Project, enabling the juniors to step into school leadership roles during the month of May.
Junior Privileges
During the month of May, and with parental permission, juniors in good standing may sign out and go off campus during free periods.
Developmental Themes for 11th Graders
It is common for 11th graders to focus on issues of intimacy, identity, autonomy and leadership.
Intimacy
By junior year, increasingly students turn to their friends (rather than parents) for emotional support.
Identity
Questions of identity—“Who am I? What are my values and priorities? What are my choices?”—are especially salient both within the academic and social world of SPA and in guiding the college search process as it begins in junior year.
Autonomy
Adults may feel a “push/pull dynamic with juniors as they assert their need for greater autonomy yet at the same time need clear and consistent boundaries from teachers and parents.