Bridgeport Middle

New Student Registration Aug.12; 8am-2pm; See our Counselor's page for details!

413 Johnson Avenue
Bridgeport, WV 26330
304-326-7142
Fax - 304-842-6275

2008-2009 WV Exemplary School!

"Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them."

Henry Steele Comager

     Welcome to Bridgeport Middle School
We are located in Bridgeport, West Virginia, a small city in Harrison County in the north central portion of the state. Our school facility, completed in the spring of 1995, houses grades 6-8 with an enrollment of approximately 600 students. Following the middle school concept, each grade level, which has 2 teams per grade, has a designated pod of classrooms, computer lab, and specified teams of teachers.

     In addition to the basic skills teachers and classes, students have the opportunity to participate in Related Arts classes such as Art, B.A.S.E., Research, Computer Applications, General Music, Technology Education, Band, Strings, F.L.E.X (Foreign Language Exploratory), Physical Education and Health and Academic Enrichment.  There is a full-time guidance counselor on site and an assigned school nurse is available weekly.

     A technology-rich environment, BMS offers students access to computers in all classrooms as well as seven computer labs, which are maintained by an on-site technology coordinator. The library/media center is under the supervision of a full-time library/media specialist.

     BMS offers a variety of sports for students' participation. We have a football team, volleyball team, track/cross-country team, girls softball team, girls and boys basketball teams, danceline, and cheerleading team. A full-time Athletic Director oversees all of these events.

***DIRECTIONS TO BMS***

School is changing, and it’s changing for all the right reasons. It’s called “Global21: Students deserve it. The world demands it.”

Today’s students don’t just memorize facts. As digital learners, they master content and learn to apply it through many different ways -- from classroom activities to project-based learning to district, state, national and international tests. You can learn more on global21.k12.wv.us./

Global21 Educators Flyer

Global21 Parents of Students Grades PreK thru 4 Flyer

Global21 Parents of Students Grades 5 thru 8 Flyer

Global21 Parents of Students Grades 9 thru 12 Flyer

Global21 Newspaper Ad

Picturing America!

Week of June 1, 2009



George Catlin (1796–1872), Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—

Mandan, 1861/1869. Oil on card mounted on paperboard, 181?2 x 24 in. (47 x

62.3 cm.). Paul Mellon Collection.

GEORGE CATLIN [1796–1872]

Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—Mandan, 1861/1869

“There is occasionally a chief or warrior of such extraordinary renown, that he is allowed to wear horns on his head-dress.…The reader will see this custom exemplified in the portrait ofMah-to-toh-pa…. [He is] the only man in the nation who was allowed to wear the horns.” So wrote George Catlin in Letters and Notes on the Manners,Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, begun during the artist’s two-thousand mile journey along the upper Missouri River to what is now North Dakota. It was the first of three self-financed trips between 1832 and 1836 that Catlin undertook in order to capture what he rightly believed to be the final and most thorough visual record of the indigenous cultures of the frontier. Just two years earlier, the Indian Resettlement Act, designed to send Eastern Woodlands tribes inland in order to “save” them from the steady encroachment of white civilization, had passed Congress.

     Catlin painted a full-length portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa, second chief of the Mandan people, in late summer of 1832. The Mandan, a stationary agricultural and hunting tribe living in domed timber-and-earth lodges, occupied two villages above the Missouri River near present-day Bismarck. Catlin and Mah-to-toh-pa developed a close relationship: the painter was one of only two white men to observe the Mandan sacred rite, the O-kee-pa, before the tribe’s extinction from smallpox in 1837.

     This image of Catlin painting the chief is one the artist reproduced from memory later in his life; it derives from a print that served as the frontispiece to his Notes, published in 1841. Catlin’s Notes tell us that the painting is incorrect in many details: the location is not indoors, and the individuals surrounding the chief include braves. Even Catlin’s attire is a little too neat for the wilderness. Surrounded by onlookers, he seems to be showing off a bit, and indeed, when we look carefully, it becomes apparent that Catlin’s role as artist is really the subject of this work. The glowing canvas on its makeshift easel occupies the center of the painting, and our eyes travel between Mah-to-toh-pa and his likeness. The openmouthed audience, who according to Catlin were aghast at his skill in capturing what many Indians believed to be a part of the sitter’s spirit, is eloquent testimony to the artist’s ambition and stunning accomplishment.