Welcome to our Middle School

Thornton Friends’ School’s middle school offers a rich, vibrant program especially designed for early adolescents.  We offer a safe and nurturing school environment where students learn well and respect one another in the process.  Our students are diverse and come to us from public, Montessori, other independent schools, and from the homeschooling community.

Our school is small. Everyone has a chance to participate in classes, and students work closely with their teachers.  We take students’ interests, abilities, and goals into consideration when we teach.  We are a Quaker school community: every student has an important voice, and their input into community life is essential.

We are active learners in our middle school.  We use experiential-learning activities to challenge and engage our students and build skills in thinking, writing, speaking, research, and problem solving.  Physical education and the arts are an important part of our program.

Our campus is bigger than our building and grounds.  Our buses take us to community fields and gyms, pottery classes at a local studio, public libraries, museums, stores and points of interest in the local Latino community where we can practice our Spanish, local and national parks, and a variety of places for community service.  We have a cozy campus with beautiful gardens and lots of outdoor space, but we consider the greater Silver Spring area to be our real campus (and that includes DC and Baltimore, too).

By engaging middle schoolers in learning experiences geared to their age, we are preparing them for our college-preparatory upper school program.  Our middle-school graduates have the necessary skills to engage the more demanding curriculum and higher expectations of high school.  Our graduates know themselves well; they are independent learners and good self-advocates.  They know how to be active, positive members of their school family, their local community, and the wider world.

Thornton Friends Middle School

10309 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903

Phone:  301.622.9033
Email:   Admissions