Dunn Middle School
Arts and Enrichment

Our arts and enrichment curriculum is unsurpassed for private or public schools. During every afternoon over three years at DMS, students have the opportunity to receive instruction in visual and performing arts, including well-established traditions in music, performance, and visual arts, as well as uniquely focused courses such as calligraphy, mask-making, block-printing, cartooning, Renaissance painting, radio theater, marbling, video production, quilting, and photography. Professional musicians, dramatists, and artists from the community teach many of these classes.

Sixth grade DMS students participate in a year-long study of music performance and appreciation. Every student will learn to read music notation and perform on their instrument of choice. Elective choices include guitar, brass, woodwinds, percussion, broadway dance, and vocal instruction. Courses are taught by DMS staff, Arts Outreach, and local musicians such as Cyrus Clarke.

DMS students participate in a two-year Spanish program that surveys some of the basic skills learned in a Spanish I course at the high school level. The goal is to expose Middle School students to fundamental grammar and vocabulary through creative activities and exercises. Hands- on projects such as the annual "El Mercado" (marketplace) entail exploration of Latin American and Hispanic cultures. Our Spanish students gain an appreciation for this language, culture, and people, and the necessary foundation for successful acquisition of a foreign language at the high school level.

Over the course of three years DMS students take beginning and intermediate levels of Drafting, Research and Development, and Tools and Materials classes. Here students gain a safe level of comfort and skill with hand tools, plans and drawings, and project planning. They create everything from beach skimboards to carved spoons, and in the process acquire skill with a wide range of materials and tools, and a "can do" attitude towards repair and building projects.

DMS has its own Valley Oak Woodland restoration project at school, on a special corner of the Dunn School site. DMS is also involved with several local habitat restoration projects. We have cleared invasive weeds along National Forest trails, collected native seeds at the UCSB Sedgwick Ranch Preserve, and we have worked on an Urban Creeks Council project to restore a section of the Goleta Slough by removing invasive non-native plants and debris and planting natives. It's hard work, but it will make a difference!

On Fridays, two hour long workshop style electives range widely across the diverse interests of our faculty and visiting artists. A typical year of Friday offerings will include classes such as yoga, fly-fishing, bird watching, music performance, kite building, HTML Web programming, cooking, sewing, gardening, Native American crafts, model making, surfing, and local history.