Margaret Mead Junior High is a Middle school

Middle school

Middle School and Junior High School are levels of schooling between elementary and high schools. Most school systems use one term or the other, not both. The terms are not interchangeable...

 located in Elk Grove Village

Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Elk Grove Village is a municipality located in northeastern Illinois adjacent to O'Hare International Airport and the City of Chicago. Elk Grove Village encompasses in land area with located in Cook County and located in DuPage County, Illinois. The population was 32,745 at the 2010 census...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, a suburb of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 with about 600 seventh and eighth grade students. It's a part of School District 54 and houses the district's junior high magnet program

Magnet school

In education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...

, along with a discovery program for students who despite not being in magnet, perform above average on critical thinking tests. Students from Mead Junior High mostly advance to James B. Conant High School

James B. Conant High School

James B. Conant High School is a public four-year high school located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States...

 in Hoffman Estates, Illinois

Hoffman Estates, Illinois

Hoffman Estates is a northwestern suburb of Chicago in Illinois. The village is located primarily in Cook County with a small section in Kane County, Illinois. As of the 2000 census, the village population was 49,495 and estimated to be 52,520 in 2003...

.

Curriculum

All students take social science, science

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

, mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, physical education

Physical education

Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....

, and language arts

Language arts

Traditionally, the primary divisions in the language arts are Literature and Language, where language in this case refers to both linguistics, and specific languages....

 classes, along with 20 minutes of lunch, and 20 minutes of study hall

Study Hall

Study hall or study period is a term for a place and/or time during the school day where students are assigned to study when they are not scheduled for an academic class. They are most commonly found in high schools and some middle schools, especially in the United States...

. Students also get to choose up to two elective classes of either world cultures, study skills, media

Media studies

Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...

, art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, band

Musical ensemble

A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...

, orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

, chorus, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, and French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 .

Teams

There are four teams in Mead known as the Geckos, Sea Turtles, Gatorz, and Greenwave. These teams are all assoiciated with the color green because the Mead colors are green and white.

Extracurricular activities

Many students also choose to join after school activities, such as Yearbook Club, Drama Club, Student Council, Chat Room, Newspaper Club, Science Olympiad

Science Olympiad

Science Olympiad is an American elementary, middle, or high school team competition which tests knowledge of various science topics and engineering ability. Over 6,200 teams from 49 U.S. states compete each year. Most teams compete in three levels of competition: regionals, states, and nationals...

, Math Club, Chess Club, Drama Club, Partner’s Club, Bocce

Bocce

Bocce is a ball sport belonging to the boules sport family, closely related to bowls and pétanque with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire...

, Gaelic Football

Gaelic football

Gaelic football , commonly referred to as "football" or "Gaelic", or "Gah" is a form of football played mainly in Ireland...

, Improv, Poms and Yoga Club. School sports include cross-country, basketball, cheerleading, girls volleyball, wrestling, and track and field. In addition, intramurals are run between sport seasons with activities that include basketball, ping pong, open gym, and social interaction.

Awards and recognition

Mead received the U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award for Excellence in Education in 1995. It also obtained both the Academic Excellence Award and Academic Improvement Award in 2009.