A community pillar for decades, Deerfield Beach Middle School has produced many distinguished graduates.
I probably don’t qualify as distinguished, but I went through 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there, and I can personally attest to the fact that DBMS is a much better school now then it was in the late 1970’s.
From new buildings to new academic programs, to many more electives and clubs, the home of the Junior Bucks is an impressive place.
Let’s start with the International Baccalaureate magnet program.
“It really focuses on international understanding as well as building a good social-emotional learning environment for our students,” explained the principal, Dr. Latori Fulton.
The IB program is designed to give students a global perspective.
“The students look at things through different lenses which are called global contexts, so they look at things through the eyes of different people, and how the world looks differently when you look at things from one angle versus another angle,” said the magnet coordinator, M.J. Caputo.
The IB program feeds into Deerfield Beach High School’s IB magnet, so the kids have to take eight required courses to be ready, including a foreign language.
“Most magnet programs only focus on one area of interest or ability, the IB program develops the whole child,” Caputo said.
It’s academically demanding, but worth it, Fulton says.
“It’s huge, what it does is it opens us up to different cultures and beliefs and different people and principles, it really follows the IB philosophy,” Fulton explained.
The school also has an innovative way to encourage excellence, the Mentoring Tomorrow’s Leaders program. Eighth graders mentor the sixth graders, covering everything from tutoring to just talking about social or personal issues.
“If they have any behavioral problems we have adult coaches that step in and help them with that, so it has definitely changed the culture of our school because now students are more focused academically and behaviorally they’ve made a big turnaround,” said Lisa Livingston, an assistant principal who oversees the mentoring program.
There’s so much more going on now at Deerfield Beach Middle now then there was back in the days when I was running around in short shorts on the basketball team. The 32-acre campus has an aquatics center, a fitness room, and tons of computer technology that of course, wasn’t even on anyone’s drawing board yet in the 1970’s.
From sports to arts to clubs, chances are they have it at DBMS.
