38°57′5.16″N 77°11′29.81″W / 38.9514333°N 77.1916139°W / 38.9514333; -77.1916139
James Fenimore Cooper Middle School (Cluster: 1; Grades: 7-8, website), in McLean, is a public school established in 1962 and named after the author James Fenimore Cooper. The school's principal is Arlene Randall. Most students go on to attend Langley High School while a minority are accepted to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria.
Cooper serves the communities of McLean and Great Falls as well as certain parts of Vienna, Reston and Herndon. Feeder schools include Great Falls, Forestville, Colvin Run, Churchill Road, Spring Hill and Franklin Sherman Elementary.
The school day begins at 7:40 AM and ends at 2:30 PM.
Books-A-Million has a business partnership with the school, having given its books for the school's book fair.
The school offers a partial-Japanese language immersion program for those who have taken the language in elementary school. Another program at Cooper is Mobile Team Challenge, an experiential team-building low ropes course designed to support the learning and emotional environment for the students.
Eighth graders have access to such electives as Journalism, Technology Education, Foreign Language, Music, Art, Drama, Tech Tools, Family and Consumer Sciences, and Special Education.
Seventh graders have access to some of the above.
There are three bands in Cooper; Cadet band, Concert band, and the most highest Symphonic band. The symphonic band usually eighth graders goes on overnight trips to other states or some times, overseas. In the 2010-11 school year, they went to Orlando, FL to Disney for four days and three nights. The Concert band usually goes to Hershey park. The orchestra and choir are divided the same.
Cooper Middle School's newspaper, The Hawkeye, was first published in 1962 and as of 2010, has made the transition to a News-magazine. The Hawkeye is written by Cooper's 150+ Journalism students. The magazine is edited and designed by an Advanced Journalism class which also designs the Pathfinder, Cooper's Award Winning Yearbook, and the Glimmerglass, Cooper's Literary Magazine.
Teams are organized by grade like high school sub-schools. The school has three eighth grade teams (Avalanche, Team Fusion, Tornadoes) and three seventh grade teams (Galaxy, Comets and the Super Novas). In the school year 2011-12, they had changed the team names to 8th grade (Voyagers, Apollo, Vikings).
Read more about this topic: Robert Frost Middle School (Fairfax County, Virginia)
Famous quotes containing the words james, fenimore, cooper, middle and/or school:
“So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“The Americans ... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
where too many had laid out lights
that stuck to you and left a burn
that smarted into your middle age.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“When we were at school we were taught to sing the songs of the Europeans. How many of us were taught the songs of the Wanyamwezi or of the Wahehe? Many of us have learnt to dance the rumba, or the cha cha, to rock and roll and to twist and even to dance the waltz and foxtrot. But how many of us can dance, or have even heard of the gombe sugu, the mangala, nyang’umumi, kiduo, or lele mama?”
—Julius K. Nyerere (b. 1922)