Students experience significant intellectual, physical, psychological, social, and moral/ethical development during the middle grades. STR designs both middle and junior high school facilities to support this transformative time in a student’s life. Our work, which includes new facilities, renovations, and additions, accommodates the differing middle-grade pedagogies: team teaching and teacher planning in middle schools and departmental configurations in junior high schools. Universally, we design spaces to incorporate 21st century principles of collaboration, project-base instruction, critical thinking and problem solving, differentiated instruction, and physical and social development.