Robert Frost Middle School (Fairfax County, Virginia) - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Middle School

38°54′35.47″N 77°10′21.91″W / 38.9098528°N 77.1727528°W / 38.9098528; -77.1727528

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Middle School (Cluster: 1; Grades: 7-8, website), north of Falls Church, is a public school named after the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The school's mascot is the Lancer. It is a two story building with two gymnasiums, one cafetorium, and a lecture hall. It also has a small basement and a two room "mini mod." The "Villas of Lancer Park" are currently being vacated as classrooms are being added into new hallways and on a basement floor. The principal is Carole Kihm. She became principal on May 19, 2008.

The student body in 2010–2011 had 1272 students and was 24% Asian, 59% White, 10% Hispanic, 2% Black, and 5% Other.

Elementary schools that feed into Longfellow include Chesterbrook, Haycock, Kent Gardens, Franklin Sherman, and Timberlane. Additionally, some students come from Lemon Road, Westgate, Spring Hill, Colvin Run, and Churchill Road Elementary schools. Most of Longfellow's 1200 students go to McLean High School, but some go to Langley High School, Marshall High School, or Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. In order to attend Thomas Jefferson, students must apply and be accepted, as it is a magnet school. In past years Longfellow has proudly become a huge contributor to the Thomas Jefferson population.

Longfellow Middle's classes include those for the average student, such as Science, Mathematics, History, etc. and also classes for those students who require a higher level education, such as Math Honors, both levels of Algebra, Geometry, Science Honors, and History Honors. Longfellow Middle also provides classes for the mentally disabled, and has an entire after-school club devoted to entertaining these students called "Good Buddies".

Longfellow Middle also provides extra classes like Technology Education, where students learn the basics of using power tools to construct different types of objects; Home Education, where students learn basic things they should know how to do in their house like cooking, sewing, and ironing laundry; and Journalism, where students are taught how to create newspaper articles and then publish them in the school's quarterly newspaper, the "Longfellow Lead".

Longfellow Middle teaches four award-winning bands titled Beginner Band, Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, and Symphonic Band, where Beginner is a class for beginning musicians and Symphonic is for musicians with at least two years of experience. The Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, and Symphonic Band regularly compete in annual competitions at Busch Gardens Williamsburg Amusement Park and Kings Dominion Amusement Park. At these competitions the musicians play pieces of music while a panel of judges critiques their sound and style. The Longfellow Bands have won several awards in these competitions, and in June of 2012 the Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, and Symphonic Band all came home with 1st place trophies and awards. Longfellow's orchestra is also quite renowned, with Longfellow's Chamber orchestra winning the Middle School Division at the 2012 National Orchestra Festival in Atlanta in addition to the many awards it has received at Busch Gardens Williamsburg Amusement Park.

The school has two gymnasiums, two playing fields, a basketball court, and a quarter mile gravel track, as well as a beautiful library, a lecture hall, and a Black Box theater. After-school activities at Longfellow include basketball, theater productions, Quiz Bowl, Rocketry Club, Rubik's Cube Club, LED Club, Technology Student Association, Homework Club, Red Cross Club, Math Counts, Science Bowl, Science Olympiad, and Knowledge Masters/Quiz Bowl. The Longfellow Knowledge Masters team has been ranked as one of the top teams in the entire country and has received several first place awards. Its Science Olympiad team in 2012 won Virginia's highest ever ranking of 8th at the National tournament. The Science Bowl and Quiz Bowl team both took second in 2012 at each respective national tournament, while its History Bowl team took home first place. In 2012, Tajin Rogers from Longfellow won the first ever National History Bee, which was televised on television. The school has won many awards in mathematics and science, and is nationally ranked for its math department. On March 13, 2008, Margaret Spellings, the United States Secretary of Education, visited the school to publish a review of the math education in the United States and to get rid of "fuzzy math".

In early 2009, Longfellow Middle School introduced a new academic activity called "Lancer Time," a 20-minute period at the end of the day, which is intended to give students time to get help from their teachers without having to stay after school. During this period, students can also work on homework and projects from other classes. The period is also used one day a week to teach the students about certain values such as honesty and leadership, as well as introducing better study habits to help students prepare for their exams. Other classes, as well as hall passing time, were shortened to account for the new period.

Longfellow Middle School and other Fairfax County Schools require their students beginning in third grade to take an end-of-year exam known as the Standards of Learning test, or SOL, that covers all of the knowledge learned during the school year.

School currently begins at 7:40 and ends at 2:31 as other Fairfax County Schools middle schools do.

Longfellow is one of the top feeder schools into the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), often with 60 or more representatives in the freshman class.

Longfellow Middle School has been honored several years in a row with the Governor's Award of Excellence. It also known for educating worldwide celebrity, Jared Leto, actor and front man of the band 30 Seconds to Mars.