Eighth Grade Experience

GMS girls arrive to school for eighth grade with a well-developed sense of the group’s identity, the ability to self-advocate, and a high level of sophistication at working collaboratively. They are ready to complete their GMS journey, both individually and as a community.

In a year that culminates with each girl's Personal Odyssey, eighth graders explore complex and often intense topics. Students experiment with the building blocks of nature and learn to calculate mechanical energy; they work through the quadratic algorithm in math and programming algorithms in Python; they create and perform a Shakespeare production. Throughout this journey, the students refine how they fit together as a community. Our eighth graders arrive at graduation with deep levels of self-awareness, understanding, maturity, and compassion.

At the foundation of GMS is a philosophy of growth mindset and self-discovery. ​​​​​Our eighth graders use the freedom GMS provides to investigate, innovate, fail and grow. We trust in the process of learning by doing with a lens of kindness and empathy. We know that by the end of eighth grade they have the tools they need to be leaders and thoughtful supporters, keen observers of life and upstanders. As one graduate stated,

…you can’t typecast a GMS girl, because a GMS girl is every girl at her best.