The Magic of Middle School? WHAT?

This new school year is, in many ways, a truly new experience for me.  Instead of spending September 3rd introducing my syllabi, I spent this year’s first day scurrying around a middle school showing 7th graders how to use a rotating lock.  From a ten page AP Lit syllabus to “Now watch me.  It goes right-left-right,” the incongruity of middle school has impressed itself upon me. 

Today, though, I felt the magic of middle school.  Yep.  I really do mean to write “magic.”  Those painfully awkward years that everyone blocks out or later regrets are magical.  The learning that occurs during this age is bested only by the osmosis-like intellectual growth of infants and toddlers.  The hallways of Richards Middle School were practically electric today.  There was a visceral academic hum in the seventh grade hallway, and as I walked to my office, I realized again how amazing schools can be.

I know that opinion might not be popular these days as the entire educational system seems to be under attack.  That saddens me.  I saw kids today eagerly engaged in literary Socratic circles, science experiments, social study scavenger hunts, and a myriad of other academic endeavors.  This cross sample of students was completely heterogeneous; we have every demographic covered at Richards--from socio-economics to race, all of our students come from diverse backgrounds.  That antiquated idea of the American melting pot was alive and well and successfully bringing students together who two weeks ago didn’t know each other.  This is part of the magic of middle school.

Middle school is the transition time, the liaison to high school and further educational endeavors.  The first seven years of school are self-contained.  The first seven years put students into little pods that move together under the direction of one teacher.  Middle school, though, breaks those pods apart and brings six different elementary schools of 60-90 sixth graders together for the first time into a graduating class identified not by an elementary school but by a graduating year.  These students who competed against each other in 6th grade field day become a unified force of 400+ students who in six years will be the graduating class of 2019.  

Public education demands that our students learn more than just academic facts.  Our students learn how to be responsible, respectful citizens of an increasingly diverse world.  That was the hum today.  I was witnessing strangers and rivals become friends, and that transition was possible because they were sharing a mutual experience: learning. 

Education can transform life like very few other experiences can.  The students I saw today were maturing not just academically; they were growing into adulthood as they risked learning about others.  A classroom is so much more than four walls with motivational  posters.  It is a doorway to the experiences that shape who we are and who we will become.