(no subject)

[the_rck]

We just got word that the start of the spring soccer season is going to be delayed. Originally, practice was to start next week with the first games on the 12th. Rec & Ed says that the fields still have snow on them and are all wet and muddy from the melting snow. They don't want to destroy the fields by having kids in cleats running all over them (the risk of injury to the kids due to how slippery it would be is also a concern).

This gives us a little more time to get Cordelia equipped for the season. She needs new cleats and probably new socks. I think we can get another season or two out of her shin guards as they still close pretty well. I'm not sure where we'll go for the stuff she needs. Target has been hit or miss in terms of having the right size, and sporting goods stores are expensive. At least, with Cordelia playing softball, too, we get three sports seasons out of a pair of cleats-- spring soccer, softball and fall soccer.

The social worker suggested that I talk to Cordelia about my own experiences in middle school. My experiences were really terrible. I hesitate because I don't want to terrify Cordelia. Then again, she may not believe me or may think that my experiences don't apply to her. She might even be right. She's not me. Maybe her middle school experience wouldn't be horrible. Then again, the impression I have is that middle school is nasty for almost everybody. It's the age and suddenly being in a much larger school with a lot more uncertainty and constant changes.

I do think that staying at her current school would mitigate at least some of the things that make the middle school years difficult. I'm not so optimistic as to think that none of the issues would be there-- Those three years are full of transitions no matter where the children are.

I really want Cordelia to stay at her current school. I just don't want to force her. She's so adamant that she wants the middle school. Well, she's admitted that, if her best friend stays at their current school (as her parents want her to), she would want to stay. I don't think she thinks that anything will keep her friend at the current school, but her friend's parents are inclined to overrule their daughter because all her reasons for wanting to go to the middle school have to do with thinking it will be more fun.

Comments

[kyrielle]

I moved up from grade school to middle school in a system where there was one grade school feeding into one middle school. The school was not larger, and there were no more new students than is caused by families moving in any year.

There was more moving between rooms, but no greater number of changes as far as classes other than the rooms.

Middle school sucked. I think the age (and puberty coming at various times for various kids, middle school being when most of them hit it) is a lot of it, regardless of where you are.

[the_rck]

I think middle school is going to suck no matter where Cordelia is. I'm just hoping that it will be less miserable in certain ways if she's in a smaller school.

This middle school has four elementary schools that feed into it. I'm not sure how large the other schools are, but I'm pretty sure they're all larger than Cordelia's current school. There are twenty-six fifth graders in Cordelia's school. The other schools probably have at least sixty fifth graders each, so that would mean about two hundred kids in sixth grade.

Each high school has more than one middle school feeding into it, too. The local middle school splits, however, with half of the kids going to Skyline and half to Huron. Of course, that assumes that they don't close Skyline due to low enrollment. They built it about six years ago in response to spike in high school enrollment that has since vanished.

[kyrielle]

Yeah, that's a hugely different dynamic than what I went through, and probably a lot harder. Man, what a horrible time in life to do that to kids - just as it all gets messy anyway.

[the_rck]

I've heard that one of the reasons for the switch to take sixth graders out of elementary schools (which is where they were thirty years ago when I was in school) was that puberty is hitting ever earlier. They want to avoid having many kids hit puberty in elementary school because that's when so much of the awfulness starts. That is, isolating middle school age kids from both younger and older kids seems to work better. They're awful to each other, and the transitions are disruptive, but concentrating the awfulness in one place is easier for everybody but the people who are there.

I would never, ever want to teach middle school.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

To add another data point: My oldest was okay in middle school, and my middle kid is thriving there. So it's not always awful.

Me personally, I remember junior high school as being awful in some ways, but also a big relief to have more freedom and to be away from the bullies that were at my particular elementary school.

Anyway, that's just three data points, so I'm not sure it's in any way useful. :-S

[the_rck]

I'm wondering how much of being okay/thriving is being in a smaller program. I mean I thought their middle school was a lot smaller than the one Cordelia wants to attend. There's a difference between having hundreds of kids in a grade and having thirty to sixty kids in a grade.

To the best of my knowledge, Cordelia's not being bullied. Watching her class in the library, she seems to have quite a few friends who welcome her presence.

I was bullied terribly in middle school. The gym locker room was horrible that way (no supervision at all), and moving from class to class meant that the teachers never noticed. I missed a lot of school because the very thought of going made me sick. It didn't get better until high school.

[evalerie.livejournal.com]

**hug**

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The social worker suggested that I talk to Cordelia about my own experiences in middle school. My experiences were really terrible. I hesitate because I don't want to terrify Cordelia.

She's a bright girl. I'm sure she knows you're worried about her going to middle school, and it could well help her to know you're thinking about the experiences of another girl, at another school, in another century. There's also something scary about knowing there's something bad going on and nobody will tell you about it.

Scott might also tell her about HIS middle school experience, Even though my parents went to school in the '40s and '50s, when there was more gender segregation than in the 1970s, I felt a lot more resonance with my father's school stories than with how my mother had grown up or with how she wished she had.

[the_rck]

I'll see if I can get Scott to do that. Of course, his experiences are colored by having moved every year or two for most of his childhood. Cordelia already thinks of his experiences as kind of foreign.

I will tell her about my experiences. Maybe it will help her. Maybe it won't.

I probably should talk to her about her grandfather's upcoming surgery, too, just to make sure she's not worried about. We've been relatively open about the fact that it's going to happen. We've just tried not to let her know that there's anything to be worried about.

[retsuko.livejournal.com]

I hated my JHS/middle school experience and was bullied, but I had a lot of good times, too (granted, most of them were not at school.) I wish that someone had helped me understand that there was going to be a lot of un-even-ness (for lack of a better word) in the JHS/middle school experience. I think if you frame your stories to Cordelia as "this did happen to me, but won't necessarily be your experience" it could be really positive for her, and a valuable caveat that a lot of uncertainty is about to rear its difficult head.

[the_rck]

I do need to talk to Cordelia. Scott and I both do, I think.

Of course, I just talked to her friend's mother. She says that Cordelia's friend's main reason for wanting to go to the middle school is that she thinks Cordelia will be there. It's circular.