Performing Arts

Our performing arts building houses our music, theater, speech, and dance classes. You'll often see students just hanging around, though, in the cozy spaces here to work collaboratively or just relax.

The seventh and eighth grade students take a full year of music here. We offer chorus, orchestra, or jazz band. Students can begin band with the choice of instruments including trumpet, flute, clarinet, or trombone. Student musicians at all levels can find a group to challenge themselves.

If a student decides, they can certainly continue on with their music experience in high school. Vocal and instrumental groups rehearse throughout the year to perform concerts on and off campus.

Exposure to various electives in our middle school is something that we value greatly. We want our youngest students to continue trying things, exploring their interests, see what they like.

Our seventh graders take a full year of speech class, and eighth graders take one semester of debate and one semester of acting. We often hear feedback from parents that their kids definitely know how to argue after some of our classes.

Additionally, the middle school students have the opportunity to participate in their own play or musical.

Our upper school students are also very involved in theater, putting on two plays, one musical, and an end of year showcase.

While many of our productions are on our main stage, the black box theater is an intimate theater space, allowing for more variety in our productions.

We also have a set design, costume studios, dressing rooms, and a green room for our actors to gather.

Our dance studio is used a great deal throughout the school year, but winter is when it is really busy. The space is at full capacity as students in the upper school prepare, choreograph, and perform a variety of numbers for the greatly anticipated dance show.

Our performing arts building is also a gathering space for our school community. Every school day begins in assembly. Students, faculty, and staff come together each morning to hear announcements from our head of school and other members of the community.

Most mornings begin at 8:15, and we have different bell schedules to accommodate different lengths of a morning assembly. Each student is assigned a seat that they sit in each day. This is how we take attendance at Burroughs. This space functions as our homeroom.

Seventh and eighth graders sit up in the balcony, while grades nine through 12 are on the lower level, with our senior class sitting in the first three to four rows of our auditorium.

Often, we'll have guest speakers, musical performances, and presentations. Morning assembly is a wonderful, intentional tradition of how we create community. Taking time out of every day to come together as one, simply to touch base about things that are going on on our campus, can be a very powerful experience for young people.

Assembly is one of the most effective ways for us to teach our culture of kindness and reinforces our school's values. Young students see many ways of being cool through the older students' announcements, presentations, and performances. Often, those brave student presentations or performances are met with powerful and supportive standing ovations from our student audience.

Once all announcements are made, a bell rings, and everyone is off to their classes. Let your day begin.