An Interview With Craig Hardimon

Your Schools occasionally features interviews with Acton and Acton-Boxborough school principals and other educators and administrators. In this installment, R. J. Grey Junior High School Principal Craig Hardimon discusses the experience of working with young adolescents, the effects of stress on that age group, and what he hopes his students take with them after their years at the school.

Currently in his eighth year at , Hardimon said his previous experiences in education, in locations as diverse as Holyoke, Mass., and the King Philip Regional School District in the southeast region of the state, range from "elementary, middle school, and high school…urban to suburban."

 What are some of the rewards and challenges of working with this age group?

I really do like middle-school-age kids. It's a fun group. You have to appreciate their humor, how they’re thinking. There’s a lot happening here. I tell parents that on a good day, middle school kids have the innocence and excitement of an elementary school student with the maturity of an adult … on a bad day can beat the best of 2-year-olds with tantrums, (but) with the vocabulary and ability to argue of a first-year law student. You really get both … and that’s fine. It’s really exciting to work with this age group. They’re going through all sorts of developmental changes—physical, social, emotional, academic—it’s all just spinning around them. And just like with the good days and the bad days, those developmental steps are two steps forward, one step back, three steps back, four steps forward … it’s always in motion.

A big struggle (with the age group) is the influx and impact of electronics. What kids get into with bullying and teasing on Facebook, on email, with texting—that’s drastically different than it was 10 years ago. That’s just a huge change right now. It isn’t that (those things) are inherently bad, but kids at this age get into it and do things and there are more problems. The danger of it is, if a person’s being mean to another person to their face, they can see the impact of it. Natural empathy can kick in. When they do it online, they don’t see the impact. And it can blossom much more—if two people are having a confrontation at home, on the playground, at school, there’s a small number of people who are aware of it. If someone says something about someone else on Facebook, hundreds of people can see it in moments. So it can become a much larger issue, exponentially.

Are those sorts of cyberbullying issues handled the same way as other types of bullying?

Yes, but actions that happen in school may have different consequences than actions that take place out of school. But we still investigate it and try to get to the bottom of it, and to resolve the issue. We try to get things taken off Facebook and work with families and local resource officers—the police play and important role, either from an educational standpoint or an official standpoint, depending on the situation.

Are there meaningful structural differences between middle schools, which are much more common, and junior high schools such as R. J. Grey?

At their extremes, a junior high takes middle-school-aged kids and puts them in a high school structure. So their math teacher has no connection with the English teachers, with the science teachers, for example. (But) in a middle school (model), which is what we are, (there are) teams of five teachers—math, science, social studies, world language and English. Those five teachers service the same students. That way, for example, if a student’s guinea pig died last night, and they’re upset and they tell their English teacher, the English teacher knows how to get to all the (other) teachers in a matter of moments … in a middle school model, you have that coordination by team. In the junior high model, the structure is by department. So all the English teachers may work together, all the science teachers may work together, but the English and science teachers may not. So it’s easier to coordinate curriculum in a junior high, but it’s harder to provide that level of support. In a middle school it’s easier to provide that support, but you have to work a little harder for the curriculum coordination. We have a really nice model—we have the structure of a middle school but organizationally, when it comes to department meetings, those are by department. So I think we have the best of both worlds. We’re truly a middle school with a little bit of junior high curriculum coordination.

And if there are issues of bullying and teasing … when one teacher’s aware of it, that teacher can share with all of the adults who work with that child quite easily. We can provide, again, that extra set of eyes, that support to try to assist and address any issues where kids are uncomfortable.

The topic of teen stress is a prevalent one in high schools all over the country. Do you see a rise in it with the younger adolescents here?

We absolutely have issues with stress here. Kids are worried about what levels they’re going to be in, what college they’re going to get into … it’s concerning to us as adults to see a 7^th-grader a month or two in, worrying about what college they’re going to go to. We also have a lot of kids who are involved in music lessons, sports, extra after-school studying programs, so we do have many over-scheduled students. So I’m sure how early it starts, but we certainly see issues of stress and anxiety at the middle school level.

We’re glad that we have a lot of kids who are involved in our clubs and activities in school. If (they) want to come to chess and board game club, they just do—there’s no requirement. We like to have kids feel a sense of community at this school, so we have (these) clubs and activities to help them de-stress a little bit.

One of the things we did this year to try to alleviate stress and improve learning was to move from a quarter system to a trimester. It used to be four nine-week quarters … we changed (that) to three 12-week trimesters and that has slowed the pace of the school down. It’s much less frenetic. Teachers are able to assign more assignments in a smoother and easier way. By the time the trimester closes, they really have a good sense and a good understanding of the student, and those grades are really based on a wealth of knowledge. Additionally for those students who are struggling, when they get an interim at week six, they have six more weeks to turn things around. It provides a lot more recovery time. We have found that improving our ability to assess students’ progress, slowing the pace down, has lowered the stress and anxiety and improved learning. So that’s the big thing we’ve done this year, and we really feel very good about it.

What are some ways you interpret success here, beyond grades and test scores?

We want our kids to be active learners. Good grades are important—everyone likes As—but equally important is when you don’t have the grade as high as you want, the ability to look at it and say, why did I miss that … (if) it’s a silly error, I just have to remember to try harder. If I don’t understand something, now I know what to ask the teacher. We really want the kids to be able to answer questions they’ve never seen before. It isn’t just about getting the right answer—they need to know how to problem-solve, to take things they’ve never heard or seen and say, how am I going to approach that? That’s so important.

We really stress active citizenship here—what’s your role in the community? What’s your role in the school? We do a lot of community service projects … every year we collect food for the Acton food pantry, to recognize that in our own community, there are people who need assistance. And if we have the time and the means, we have an obligation to help. When students are studying about other countries in social studies, there are times we ask how we can help other countries … it’s getting them to see beyond themselves. As much as we want them to be aware of their own learning and their own importance and their role in the world, there are other people out there, and how can they help society?

And we want to develop resiliency…resiliency is critical as we grow and become learners and move on into adulthood. Everyone will always come across some stress, tension, lack of success. How do you pick yourself up? How do you find a way to say, OK, I’ve fallen down, or I’ve been knocked down, or I don’t know something…how do I get help? How do I advocate for myself? Something I say to parents is if your kid is struggling a little bit, it’s OK. If there’s a little failure, let them fail. Don’t let them fail for a whole year, but experiencing a little failure is good for the soul. Because then they need to pick themselves up. If it goes on, we can work together—encourage them to go to their counselor or their teacher to find out themselves how they can best be more successful. If that goes on and they’re still not successful, we as adults should then step in. And we have an incredible staff here to help kids through that—fantastic counselors, wonderful teachers, excellent special educators.

In what ways do you hope their time at R. J. Grey has prepared kids for high school?

We want them to have a better understanding of themselves as learners. We want them to have good organizational skills—because if you’re organized, and you’re not sure what’s going on, you can go back and find the materials. You don’t lose things. Organization can help you through a lot. We want them to know what their strengths are, and to be able to seek support (for) those areas that are difficult for them. We want them to be successful academically—that’s not the only piece but clearly we want them to have the skills to be successful in high school. And as I said, we want them to understand their role in society … they have a role in the world, and wherever they can, there’s value in helping others.