Why MP&MS
At Marin Primary & Middle School, we believe that it’s deep connections–between students, with teachers, and with ideas–that help kids know themselves and push through boundaries in school and in life. Our graduates benefit from self-confidence, self-awareness, and the courage that comes from solid connections.
Be Connected
Be Curious
Asking the right questions is more important than knowing all the answers. MP&MS teachers meet students where they are and encourage them to follow their interests and push past personal boundaries. When asked to think outside the box, our students shine. At MP&MS, curiosity leads the way.
Be Courageous
Marin Primary & Middle School creates an educational environment that honors the courage it takes to succeed—and the courage it takes to fail and press on. Learning perseverance is an essential step in the journey to adulthood. In the classroom, in the arts, and on the playing field, our students benefit from the courage that comes from solid connections.
"It’s evident that the MP&MS graduates we see have been encouraged to pursue their own curiosity. They emerge with a passion for inquiry and empathy that will last their whole lives."
—Head of School at a Bay Area Independent High School
Learning @ MP&MS
MP&MS’ joyful, learner-centered environment ensures students develop a lifelong passion for learning that balances wonder and rigorous inquiry.
Because children respond best to kindness, encouragement, and mutual respect, our curriculum is rooted in relationships, relevance, and high standards. We teach students to learn with, and from, each other, and we teach the group to respect the individual.
Our teachers work closely together to identify and cultivate the varied ways in which our students learn. MP&MS teachers encourage children to trust their natural desire to question and explore while providing students with dynamic and collaborative environments where they can demonstrate emerging mastery in literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, citizenship, social-emotional well-being, and more.
Ultimately, our measure of success is in the enthusiasm of our students as they take on new challenges, build lasting relationships, and graduate to high school as confident contributors, empathetic leaders, playful innovators, authentic advocates, and empowered learners.
Developed in the early 1990s, these precepts continue to speak to the guiding philosophy of the MP&MS approach.
If the student does not learn the way we teach, we change the way we teach without sacrificing the school’s standards.
We cherish individual internal differences in students. Our teachers create varied opportunities for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding.
We measure each student’s academic success individually.
Each student should make a year’s progress in a year’s time, as measured against themselves.
We expect age-appropriate behavior in the classroom.
We make school meaningful without sacrificing each student’s personal nature or the pace of early childhood into adolescence.
We remember that school is not the student’s idea.
We make school as personally and individually meaningful as possible.
We understand the priorities of our students.
Each day, each student asks: Who is my friend? Does the teacher appreciate me? Can I be myself here?
We put relationships first, curriculum second.
The quality and integrity of the relationships between teachers and students ensure a healthy, productive, student-centered balance. Our classrooms are highly productive and low in maladaptive stress while promoting experiences outside students’ “comfort zone,” which is necessary for growth.
We see parents/guardians as partners.
The quality of parental involvement, formed within respectful and appropriate boundaries, is as much a vehicle for success as the methods and materials in the classroom. We maintain open communication, educate our parents/guardians about how and why our school works, and embrace that parents/guardians are the foremost experts in their children.
We ask ourselves:
How is this child smart? Not: how smart is this child?