Our Authentic Community | Midland School

Authentic Community

Unplugged and connected

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Community is at the center of Midland student life. Our prefect system ensures that students always have peer mentors to help guide them through the boarding experience, while also teaching our seniors responsibility for their community. Midland students and faculty jump at the opportunity to drive club and extracurricular activities in the afternoons and evenings, hosting movie nights featuring buttery popcorn and chocolate chip cookies, Coffee Houses (Midland’s version of open-mic nights), puzzles & games in faculty homes and smores-roasting & hot chocolate–drinking by the campfire, under the stars somewhere out on the property.
Midland’s intentional technology policy prioritizes face-to-face conversations over screen time; our students leave their cell phones at home so that they can spend their time hiking, reading and chatting over cups of tea rather than on social media. A discussion of Midland student life wouldn’t be complete without mention of the delicious family-style meals our community shares in Stillman Hall: breakfast burritos, shepherd’s pie, tomato soup & grilled cheese, a homemade peanut butter & jelly station and a salad bar full of vegetables picked that very morning. Even the pickiest eaters can always find something they love at Midland!

Intentional Technology

Our cell phone–free campus creates belonging

At its core, Midland’s intentional technology policy fosters a tight-knit educational community based on face-to-face relationships. We find that those relationships develop best without a cell phone glued to our hands, so we ask our students to leave them at home when coming to school. Fundamentally, we use our technology to delve deep into learning and to spend time together as a community, rather than feeling tied to our cell phones and social media throughout the day.

Prefects & Prefectees

Yes, just like at Hogwarts

Midland’s tiered student support system is a cornerstone of sustaining the community’s wellbeing, and prefects serve as foundational members of this system. With faculty, administrative and student input, rising seniors who have demonstrated qualities such as  leadership, responsibility and compassion are selected to be prefects each year. Through nightly check-ins and regular group activities, prefects break down barriers between classes and ensure that the underclassmen feel the safety and support to flourish at Midland.

Meet the Dean

José Juan Ibarra, Dean of Students

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Real talk: no cell phones?

What it's really like to trade in your cell phone for your high school experience

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Biting the Boarding Bullet

The Boarding School Difference

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Student Life Highlight: Clubs

How Midlanders spend their free time

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Why Boarding?

A live-in educational community like no other

Midland is so much more than just a school; it’s an academic, experiential and life experience that can only happen here, on our 2,860-acre campus, surrounded by friends, peers and mentors. Our residential life program empowers us to provide an immersive program like no other!

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Our Mission & Values

Paul & Louise Squibb's educational vision

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Experiential and Place-based Education

Our rigorous college-preparatory academic model

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Only at Midland

Natural Horsemanship, a 10-acre Farm & Garden, Outdoor Leadership and so much more

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