The SMCVS Middle Schooler extends the prophetic and priestly aspects into a true protagonism, both academic and personal.  As The Educational Covenant puts it (p. 110):

True education is much more than offering fragments, 

methods that allow one to acquire skills, knowledge, languages.  

To educate is to make it possible for a person to embark on an authentic journey 

of human fullness, in which his own deification is made possible 

as he reaches the point of desiring and thinking like God.

Through studying the great figures of history and literature, the student understands that to become a Saint and a Genius is to become a Hero, simultaneously.  This understanding takes place not only at the intellectual level, but at the affective and behavioral levels as well.  Our curricular focus in the Middle School is on grasping the truth that Christ the King is the model and inspiration of heroism itself.

What does it mean that Christ is King  (CCC, no. 786)?  To most Americans, whose main association with the concept of royalty is our rejection of it during the Revolution, not much.  But in truth the recognition of His reign not only over the entire cosmos, but over each and every human heart, is the quintessence of what it means to be Catholic.  And where Christ is King, Mary Immaculate is the Queen.

Protagonism, by which is meant taking increasing responsibility for one’s own life and, as required by God’s law and the common good, the lives of those around us (see The Educational Covenant, Chapter 7), therefore comes to the forefront during Middle School.  Not only academic excellence, but also self-advocacy and positive contribution to the school community, are asked and expected of each student.  Paradoxically, protagonism in this sense can only take place when we submit to Christ as King and Mary as Queen.  Otherwise, what the world calls “becoming our best self” is only another way of repeating the non serviam of Satan, who unjustly claims the right to define the term “best” all by himself.  As C. S. Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce, to be a Saint, Genius, and Hero is to be subject to Christ the King: “Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves; we desire the beginning of Your Reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light.”