Academics

Middle Division (5-8)

Casady School offers a 15-year experience intentionally designed to prepare students for success and to inspire young people to honor, to learn, to engage, to innovate, to serve, and to thrive.
The miracle of our building is transformation. Indeed, we often say welcome to the “messy” middle, because our students are in the middle of one of the most significant periods of growth, learning, and progress they will experience. Our teachers not only understand the unique academic, social, and emotional challenges of middle school, but they are eager to guide their students through these sometimes choppy waters. We understand they need more than just the information delivered in a classroom. They need the time and opportunity to develop their humanity and gain wisdom. In our classrooms, on our courts and fields, around our lunch tables, and in our Chapel rows, our students are engaged in the sometimes messy, always precious, business of growth. As a learning community, we celebrate the notion that we are all a work in progress, and the Middle Division team is ready to provide the right combination of accountability, support, humor, and understanding as our students grow.

As a former Middle Division parent, when I considered what I wanted most for my children, I wanted them to be in a place where the adults were genuinely interested in them as emerging young people. I wanted to know that they were seen and known not just for the results they produced on a test, but for who they were as thinking and feeling members of a community. At Casady, our students have the opportunity to engage deeply with significant ideas, the space to explore their emerging sense of self, and the encouragement to navigate the choppy waters of early adolescence. Middle Division is a place of dynamic change. Our students enter as fifth graders full of enthusiastic anticipation and leave as confident eighth graders ready to embrace their Upper Division years.

Sara Zedlitz
Director of Middle Division

Program Overview

The Middle Division adheres to the purpose, mission, and philosophy of Casady School as expressed in the School’s mission statement and endeavors to educate the whole child in Mind, Body, and Spirit. An overall philosophy guiding the Middle Division program is the commitment to developing courage, creativity, and connection in our community. We support and emphasize the practice of these characteristics in a variety of ways in the classroom through a challenging curriculum that asks students to make connections between disciplines, practice curiosity and creative problem-solving skills, and develop the courage to stretch themselves. While we encourage independent thinking, self-advocacy, and self-sufficiency, middle schoolers also need support and guidance. To that end, our teachers are available daily for extra help and provide instruction in organizational and time management strategies as well as their content areas. Teachers work in both grade level as well as departmental teams to provide “wrap-around” support for students. We consider the formation of young people from a holistic perspective, and these teams enable our faculty to develop programs that emphasize both academic and character education goals. 

All Middle Division students are enrolled in English, Science, Math, and History courses as well as a Modern Language course. In seventh grade, they complete a year-long Computer Science course, and in eighth grade, Foundational Latin is added to the curriculum. In addition to their year-long academic courses, students take between four and six trimester-length elective/co-curricular courses designed to complement and enrich their overall student experience.

For a more in-depth look at our course offerings, please explore our Middle Division curriculum guide.
9500 N. Pennsylvania Ave., Oklahoma City, OK 73120     |     Phone: (405) 749-3100
Casady School is an independent, co-educational, college preparatory, Episcopal day school serving students in pre-k-12. Educating Mind, Body, and Spirit.
Casady School is a PreK-12, independent, college preparatory Episcopal day school committed to deeper-level learning. Casady School welcomes a student body that reflects the diversity of the world around us and therefore does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, nationality, or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, athletics, and other school-administered programs generally accorded or made available to students at the School.