Technology

Intentional, Not Inevitable. 

There are two easy answers to technology in elementary school. Ban it, or let it in without guardrails. Neither one serves a child well today, and neither one prepares them for tomorrow.

At MTS, we take a more nuanced approach. Technology here is intentional: it appears when it is the best way for a child to learn something or to show what they have come to understand, and it stays out of the way the rest of the time. A second grader learning to name and save a file, a fifth grader scripting and editing a documentary, an eighth grader building a website to share an idea — each of these is a deliberate choice, made by a teacher who knows both the child and the curriculum.

How do we do it? By designing a scope and sequence that spans all nine years, so that skills compound instead of repeat. By prohibiting the use of cell phones and smartwatches on campus. By capping the time students spend on practice software and choosing tools that minimize gamification. And by teaching, explicitly, when not to reach for a device.

The result? Graduates who can make things — films, arguments, websites, presentations, working code — and who know why they chose the tool they chose.

It is how a student shows us what they know, and it lets them make things that would otherwise remain an idea. Our community asks, "What's possible?" This is one of the places children get to answer. 

We teach our students through a deliberate K-8 sequence, revisited and deepened each year, so graduates leave prepared. 

Three Ways We Use Technology

A Tool for Creation

Understanding becomes visible when a child has to build something with it. Our students script and edit films, design and deliver presentations, draft and revise their writing, code, collaborate in real time, and build websites for real audiences. The technology is never the assignment. It is how a student shows us what they know, and it lets them make things that would otherwise stay in their heads. Our community asks, "What's possible?" This is one of the places children get to answer.

 

Skills That Compound

Research and source evaluation. Presentation design. File management, naming, and storage. Keyboarding. Digital collaboration. These are the unglamorous competencies that determine whether a student can execute an idea in high school and beyond, and they do not develop by accident. We teach them on a deliberate K–8 sequence, revisited and deepened each year, so that a graduate leaves us prepared rather than merely comfortable.
 

Practice Where It Counts

Some tools are genuinely good at one thing: meeting a student right at the edge of what they can do, and giving a teacher a clear read on where each child is. We use those tools for that purpose and no other. We watch the clock carefully, and we favor programs with the least gamification, because a child working for points is not yet working for understanding.

Keeping Kids Young in a Connected Age

At MTS, we keep kids younger, longer. Technology might seem to sit in tension with that commitment. We think it is one of the ways we honor it. Devices arrive later here than families often expect, and with more structure. Phones stay off campus. Screens do not fill time; they earn it. The childhood we protect is the same childhood in which a nine-year-old discovers she can make a movie.