Changes in MS by new administrators Principal William Pulgarin and Vice Principal James Bandura began this year and are designed to make students more familiar with each other.

The implementation goal of houses, ClassDojo and advisory classes is to help students create a community within the 6th, 7th and 8th grades, solve problems in their classes and help them be more aware of their behavior.

“What advisory is this year is a chance not only to connect with the house system but to do lessons with the character counts,” William Pulgarin, Middle School Principal, said.  

Three major changes were implemented in middle school, two of them were to teach the students how to properly use their values and make friends in different grades, the last one was made for the students to control their behavior.

“All of the teachers have class dojo to give positive and negative points to students so that the people that monitor the behavior can act before the student behavior spiral out of control”, James Bandura, middle school vice principal, said.

The second biggest change done to MS was the implementation of advisory. A time dedicated to teach middle schoolers what are values and how to use theme in everyday life.

“Advisory gives us a chance to meet with the students weekly and develop character values and work in problems that we need to solve as a community,” Bandura, said.

Houses is a block dedicated to enforce the character counts between all middle school students using sports to enhance the social skills of students.

“Every week in houses we focus in a moment and connect it with the character counts program, so we focus on the student by developing character using journals to write a prompt and talk about the experience,” Pulgarin, said.

Some students are getting used to the changes but are liking them as the year progresses. The most enjoyable change has been the implementation of houses.

“I like houses because I can play with friends and get to know new people.” Santiago Restrepo, 8th grader, said.

Since the new principals came MS has experienced a lot of changes that are good for the MS community including teachers, the principals, the staff members and most importantly the students.

“All the changes were created to help you improve morally” Restrepo, said.