Reaching Higher Ground

I have mentioned before that I grew up in a really small town.  So small, in fact, that my first six years of school were spent in a three-room schoolhouse with three teachers, one of whom was also the Principal.  The basement served as the cafe, art room, gym, and wood shop, sometimes simultaneously.  Special-education was in the boiler room, which also served as a conference room of sorts.  Students in fifth and sixth grade were assigned lunch duty, which meant you got to spend an hour helping the cook prepare lunch and wash the dishes afterwards. If you were good at spelling you got to give the spelling test while the Principal was on a phone call.  We rode our bikes to school, walked to the public library once a week, and played marbles in the dirt parking lot.

Then we went over the hill, literally, to middle school.  And we were unprepared.  Really unprepared.

We had never had homework, lockers, or changed classrooms.  Nor had we ever had to deal with hormones or worry about our wardrobe and what others thought of us.  It was a major shock and we were so unprepared for everything that was expected of us.  

I tell this story because I believe we are putting our current middle school students in a similar situation, albeit at a much more critical time in their education.  We built the high school to 21st century standards at the expense of leaving our other schools behind.  No where is this more apparent than in the middle school. Students in the middle school are not being exposed to the level of educational standards that we have implemented at the high school level.  They are not getting the level of education that most of us did - no science labs, home economics, or wood shop.  We are, again quite literally, sending our kids up the hill unprepared for the standards and expectations of high school.

I fully support the construction of a new seventh and eighth grade building on London Bridge Road and fully expect it to meet the education needs of our children.  As difficult as the junior high years may be for pre-teens and teens developmentally and physiologically, they are at a perfect age to be challenged mentally and creatively.  They are intellectually ready to synthesize the fundamental concepts they have learned during their elementary years.  They are excited to learn new skills and apply their knowledge in a broader context. These years should not be an uphill struggle but rather a time when we meet them halfway and give them what they need to reach higher ground.