Highlights of Exemplary Practices Aligned with the 18 Characteristics of Successful Middle Schools

Willard Middle School proudly opened our doors in 2018 as an intermediate school with eighth and ninth graders and a population of 1,350 students. During the 2020-2021 school year, we re-emerged online as a traditional middle school — with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Nestled in Loudoun County’s suburb Aldie, Virginia, we were built as the 17th middle school in the county to alleviate overcrowding at neighboring schools; however, we, too, have quickly become overcrowded ourselves and will serve 1,682 diverse scholars in 2024-25.

The soil in which our scholars learn was once home to a thriving African-American community and the Willard School, an African-American school that educated students from 1894 to the 1930s. Leaning into this history, our Willard Blueprint leads our daily efforts, with equity at the forefront. As the “Home of the Wildcats,” we encourage our scholars to challenge themselves with rigorous coursework — nearly 80% of our students participate in honors courses and 57% of our seventh and eighth graders take high-school level classes. We serve a rich and racially diverse student population by fostering an inclusive learning environment for all of our scholars. To meet the needs of our diverse community, our WILD Instructional Framework aligns to our scholars’ developmental needs and fosters curiosity, creativity, experiential learning, and authentic products. Our classrooms are culturally responsive, and teachers embrace scholars’ cultures, languages, and experiences and relate them to learning, as seen in our choice book groups that include contemporary texts aligned to our scholars’ backgrounds. We use data-informed practices to identify scholars who would benefit from remediation, as well as literacy and numeracy interventions. We support our scholars’ sense of belonging by allowing them to connect daily with their Advisory teacher and classmates. Additionally, we hold high expectations for our scholars and provide them with opportunities to advance their learning. For example, our CLTs are grounded in DuFour’s Four Essential Questions. The fourth question, “How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?” guides our teachers’ work in ensuring that our scholars meet their full potential.

Finally, we provide socially just learning opportunities and environments for our students. Beginning in 2021-2022, Willard responded to an increase in racial slurs and hateful speech by developing its first Powerful Moments lesson. This was a collective effort to offer students the opportunity to engage in rich dialogue and explore their ideas, thoughts, and feelings related to the use of hate speech, racial slurs, and derogatory language in their community. We continue to do this work, defining equity as meeting students where they are, as they are, and providing the support they need to be successful (Kafele, 2021). To ensure that we have a common understanding of equitable instruction, we provided our staff with training in November 2023. Additionally, a multi-tiered system of supports drives our work. Our staff have participated in Intervention Training and provide our scholars with Intervention Plans when the data suggest a need for additional support.