Roeper School (Michigan)

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The Roeper School is a private coeducational day school, with campuses in Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, serving students at all levels from preschool through the 12th grade. It was formerly known as Roeper City and Country School. In 2005-06, its total enrollment was 629.

1 History
2 Admission
3 Curriculum
4 Extracurriculars
5 Notable alumni
6 External links

[edit] History

The Roeper School was founded in 1941 by George and Annemarie Roeper, who were forced to flee Nazi Austria. At the time the Roepers fled Vienna, Annemarie had been invited by Anna Freud to be her protege and, in fact, had completed her first year of medical school. Together the Roepers founded the school intending it to be a place that, by teaching personal motivation and encouraging critical thinking skills and analysis, would educate children who would not follow leadership blindly as they believed had happened to many people in interwar Germany. It was also hoped the children would come to recognize the inherent dignity of every individual and to not harbor prejudice. The school first moved to the Bloomfield Hills campus in 1946 and was designated a school for gifted children in 1956. In 1965 the Upper School (high school) program was added, and in 1981, the Middle and Upper Schools moved to a former Birmingham, Michigan public middle school thereby creating two campuses.

[edit] Admission

The school accepts gifted students by means of an application process involving essays, an interview, visiting classes with a student host, and an IQ test. Qualitative Assessment, a method by which gifted children are evaluated by a trained individual, without the use of formal IQ tests, as developed by founder Annemarie Roeper, is also being explored by the school. Acceptance may be accompanied by financial aid. Although the school is never able to provide as many scholarships as it would like, it strives to honor its founders' intent that the school serve the needs of the gifted and not be a private school for the affluent.

[edit] Curriculum

Once admitted, students adhere to a liberal, yet demanding, curriculum. The curriculum does start out fairly well-structured at the elementary school level, which, at Roeper, is divided into four stages (pre-school, K-1, 2-3, 4-5). Each stage classroom has a team of two professionals who remain responsible for reading and mathematics, as well as over-seeing the holistic development of their students. There are also teachers and professionals offering courses in French, science, computer, art, library, music and other traditional disciplines. There are no grades in the lower school. Children do receive extensive narrative reports from their teachers documenting strengths and weaknesses twice a year.

Students in the Middle and Upper Schools are free to choose from most courses offered. There are only a few required classes at the Middle and Upper School level. The Roeper School offers a wide array of courses ranging from bioethics to statistics to numerous literature classes. In offering a range of courses and imposing few requirements, the school hopes to appeal to its students' strengths and interests. Students have advisers and access to administration to help them make educated choices. There is also a dedicated college counselor available at the middle/upper school campus. Letter grades are given at the Middle and Upper School level to help prepare students for the rigors of college life. The Upper School has approximately 200 students in four grades of about 50 each. The community does not choose a valedictorian or rank its students, the act of choosing a valedictorian would be difficult due the fact that many of the students have various intellectual accomplishments. Each student chooses a member of the faculty or staff to deliver a speech about the student.

[edit] Extracurriculars

The athletic teams, the Roeper Theatre Company, and other school-sponsored activities include all students who will participate, yielding strong reputations for debate and forensics, girls’ and boys’ soccer, basketball, track and field, theater and other activities. The school operates under a very informal discipline: there is no dress code, all members of the community (teachers, students, and administration) go by their first names.