Cornerstone is a foundational class that teaches 7^th graders skills they need to be a student in Upper School and beyond. Three times per week, 7th grade students join Mrs. Shaunak for a new class that is different from all of the other classes they are taking. The first two weeks of school are dedicated to “Cornerstone Boot Camp” during which Mrs. Shaunak and the students do hands-on activities to learn to use their planners more effectively and organize their backpacks and binders. They also learn study and test-taking strategies. Throughout the year, the students will engage in fun activities that will help them develop critical thinking and reading skills, helpful habits of study, researching skills, rhetorical skills, and appropriate deportment within the classroom, student body, and the community (including a field trip to a museum).  The students will also learn to use technology for academic purposes through keyboarding, basic word processing, and power point slide creation and presentation. This course is designed to help students to develop not only academically but also socially and spiritually through opportunities to grow in wisdom and virtue throughout this first year in Upper School.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. —Ephesians 2:19-22