Making life in the ‘middle’ easy as ABC

Soon-to-be seventh-grader Huehoua Vue has heard the legends of Shaw Middle School.

“Kids said you get stuffed in lockers,” said Vue, 11.

He’s worried about being bullied by older students on his first day of middle school in the fall.

Then there are the locker combinations to remember, more complicated lunch lines, making new friends and finding classes in the four minutes between bells.

“I’m worried I’ll get lost,” said Gaby Espinoza, Vue’s sixth-grade classmate at Cooper Elementary School in northeast Spokane. “It’s like you’re an adult now.” It’s exciting, but really scary, she said.

On Wednesday, about 80 sixth-graders from Cooper boarded a bus and headed over to Shaw for a sneak preview of their new world in the “middle.” In September, the Cooper students – along with sixth-graders and some fifth-graders from schools all over – will experience one of the most pivotal, and possibly the toughest, transitions of their school years: going from elementary to middle school.

After six or seven years with the same set of friends, students converge on each middle school from four or five different elementary schools, presenting challenges with new relationships, structure and discipline.

And, according to the National Middle School Association, research shows that the age group from 10- to 14-year-olds is undergoing more changes in their brains and bodies than any other time in their lives.

“These are the big physical and mental growing-up years, among the largest kids will ever experience,” said James Lien, the principal at Woodland Middle School in the Coeur d’Alene School District. “It’s a challenging time.”

Like most Spokane-area middle schools, Coeur d’Alene and Spokane Valley districts open up their doors with several welcoming activities each year to help students get acquainted with their surroundings. There are orientation barbecues and activities for parents and students. They learn how to register for classes – a first for the students – find counselors, and navigate the hallways (hint: stay on the right).

Sixth-graders from Regal Elementary School built kites along with current eighth-grade students, and then spent a day this week at Shaw, flying the kites as a mentoring opportunity. Other schools also pair up new students with older students during the school year.

“We try to do as much as we can to ease their fears and anxiety,” said Jesse Hardt, an assistant principal at Shaw. “Middle school has a reputation of being a scary place, but they come to learn it’s actually not that scary.”

It’s like starting at the bottom in kindergarten. They go from being the oldest to the youngest, a change that will occur again in high school.

“They had six or seven years to figure out a pecking order, and then all of a sudden they are thrown in with four other schools and new faces,” said Jeffrey McMurtery, a teacher at Shaw. “They don’t really know where they fit in yet.”

Unlike Spokane and Mead middle schools, which house students in seventh and eighth grade, Central Valley’s middle schools are configured for grades six through eight, as are Coeur d’Alene’s middle schools.

Woodland keeps its sixth-graders partially segregated from the seventh- and eighth-graders to help them adjust, Lein said.

“We really watch over them the first couple, three weeks of school,” Lien said.

Many middle schools also use a team-teaching approach, where students stay with the same group for core classes like math, science, English and social studies; that helps ease the transition from having many teachers, instead of one.

“Then there is also a consensus among the teachers about what the rules are and what the expectations are, so it’s not different for every teacher,” said Al Summers, the director of professional development for the National Middle School Association.

Keeping organized is a challenge that lingers, even after new middle-schoolers learn how to open their lockers, school officials said.

The transition is also difficult for parents wandering into uncharted territory. Like their children, they have to keep track of multiple classes and teachers – and of course, there are the raging hormones to deal with.

About 60 parents who have incoming sixth-graders at Central Valley’s Horizon Middle School attended an orientation at the school Tuesday night. Many of the students are the oldest siblings in a family.

“The first thing we do is deep breathing exercises,” said Denis Rusca, the principal at Horizon. “We tell the parents, ‘It’s like a roller coaster ride; just hang on tight and you’ll make it through this.’ “