The school’s Middle Years Program could open more academic doors for future students.

Students enrolled in grades six through ten will participate in the IB Middle Years Program to prepare them for the rigorous Diploma curriculum during their junior and senior years.

To do so, sixth through eighth-graders will be added to Rufus King but will be housed at the Ronald McNair building on 4950 N. 24th St.

While students begin the program at the McNair building, they will finish grades nine and ten at the high school.

 There are going to be two campuses to Rufus King as a whole: One is the Middle Years campus at McNair, and two is the high school campus at King. We are not starting a separate school; we are just expanding Rufus King and the IB program, curriculum generalist Paul Gessner said.

The middle and high school campuses will be one school with Marie Newby-Randle as principal of both campuses.

I am very excited that students will be able to experience the early International Baccalaureate program, Newby-Randle said. 

According to Gessner, the academic curriculum of the Middle Years Program will include English, math, science, social studies, Spanish and Project Lead the Way, an engineering program. Students will also take physical education, music and art.

Like IB Diploma students, participants in the Middle Years Program will complete internal assessments, critical thinking projects where students reflect on each year’s learning. 

Rather than IB exams, Middle Years Program students complete a personal project, similar to the Diploma Program’s extended essay. Participants create the personal project, a body of work reflecting the skills and experiences obtained during sixth through tenth-grades, in a 4,000-word report. Students will have the guidance of a supervisor to create the project in the form of an original piece of art, literary fiction, a science experiment or something else. 

According to IB coordinator Mavis Roesch, 214 incoming sixth-graders have already been enrolled, more than previously expected. 

It will give the students earlier exposure to the IB program. The Middle Years Program emphasizes how to learn, and our kids will have a better handle on the approaches to learning. Our kids coming up will be more prepared to seek out what they need to know; I expect they will be more creative too, Rosech said.

According to Gessner somewhere down the road Rufus King should be adding a Primary Years campus, which would include kindergarten through fifth-grades.

“The plan for a primary campus is nowhere near our present agenda. We are talking about ten years down the road. It is an over-arching vision, a long range plan,” Gessner said.