Connection, exploration, and joy are at the heart of our community.
When you walk through NOVA Middle School, you’ll notice a buzz in the air. Students debate big ideas. Teachers and students explore captivating concepts, lobbing questions back and forth. Meanwhile, the jazz band rehearses while other students collaborate on a science experiment, compose their pieces for a poetry slam, or practice the lines for a play in Spanish that they wrote themselves.
As a new trimester approaches, students chat at break or over lunch about the dozens of enrichment options they can choose from for their new afternoon schedules.
Students learn as much about themselves every day as they do in the classroom by leaning on the skills they learn through our social-emotional wellness curriculum. At NOVA, they’re successfully navigating the big challenges of early adolescence as they prepare to become young adults.
NOVA is a special place: It’s vibrant. It’s enriching. It’s safe. It’s joyful.
Highly Capable
Highly capable learners crave depth, complexity, authenticity, and an exciting pace of learning. NOVA’s curriculum is designed to meet all of these needs while helping students navigate the critical middle school years. Our holistic program embraces a deep, fast approach to learning along with comprehensive support to help students manage their social, creative, and academic selves.
Small School
A small school environment allows students to be known—by their classmates, by their teachers, and by the administration. NOVA is an intimate setting where we meet and challenge each other as like-minded learners through academic conversations, hands-on experiences, identity exploration, skill-building practices, and fun.
Ample Choices
Middle schoolers, like all people, thrive on making choices for themselves. At NOVA, we prioritize self-expression and provide students with a wide range of educational choices through our holistic afternoon enrichment program. Students gain confidence as they explore their emerging capacity to be responsible for their learning choices and to define what it means for them to show up as themselves.
Belonging
NOVA is a community of vibrant, complex students who understand intrinsically that learning itself is invigorating and who love being around similar peers. Many students feel a true sense of belonging for the very first time at NOVA—they are provided the stimulation they have craved, they find they fit in by just being themselves, and they get to thrive within, and because of, a school setting. At NOVA, lots of different types of students find an academic home.
NOVA is proud to be accredited by the Northwest Association of Independent Schools (NWAIS).
An eight-year accreditation cycle requires NOVA to define and reflect on its program and governance, and be in a continuous state of improvement. NWAIS holds high standards focused on six essential school characteristics: Commitment to the Public Good; Effective Governance and Operations; Physical Location or Place; Primary Focus of Academic Education; Commitment to Best Interests of Children; Commitment to Non-Discrimination as reflected in the NWAIS statement.
Explore Our Curriculum
