New Middle School Clubs Tap Into Myriad Interests

9/30/2026

Welcome to the club. There’s something for everyone: Ink and Flow for cursive writers, Dealt a Good Hand for card game players, and PantherCon for fandom convention fans, to name a few.

Sixth grader Henry Wolf signed up for the Cardboard Engineering club, which seemed like the perfect fit.

“I like making and tinkering with stuff,” he said. “I thought maybe it would be cool to make something out of cardboard. I want to build something that moves, maybe an F1 car.”

Head of Middle School Tasha Elsbach, who runs the Mixtape Club, explained that a new middle school club period was introduced twice per cycle to align with the Upper School, where students have a wide range of club choices.

“This gives our students the opportunity to choose what they want to participate in and increases engagement,” she explained. “And with our club participation across grade levels, new friendships are being fostered.”

Middle school faculty Brittany Farrar and Mitsuki Nishimoto are advisors of the Ethics Club, where the students discuss ethical dilemmas by reading case studies and connect issues today to the ideas of philosophers throughout history. As Nishimoto said, “In ethics, there is no one right answer. Students work through complex ethical problems in a thoughtful, collaborative way through discussion.”

Head Librarian Jillian McCoy, advisor to the new Book Club, is excited to have dedicated book club time and all the possibilities that it brings.

McCoy said, “We've got sixth through eighth grade students, and everybody's got different reading interests, so for two weeks out of the month, we'll all read a shared book together and discuss it, and then for the other two weeks they will all pick their own book to read that they can check out from the library or bring from home, and they'll share with each other what they've read.”

Elsbach said the new offerings have been going well: “It's also a wonderful way for students and teachers to connect in a less pressured way. Each can see each other in a different light. And our students are having fun!”