middle school
A Brave New World Tips for rising ninth-graders on how to navigate high school BY MELANIE SCHWED
A
THINKSTOCK
s a sixth-grade teacher, each year I welcome a new crop of students fresh out of elementary school. My job is to introduce them to the world of middle school: how to keep track of seven classes with seven different teachers, open their lockers and socialize with classmates they might be meeting for the first time. It is a daunting task to mold these bumbling, helpless newbies into the high-school-ready students they should be when they leave. But every year, I watch a group of eighth-graders move on, mature and brace themselves for the new challenges that await them. They’ve learned how to fill out a Scantron form and maybe even how to email a teacher using proper punctuation. What can I say to these students to prepare them for high school? Do I tell them how to avoid being stuffed into a locker? Do I offer advice on who to sit with in the cafeteria? Instead of seeing high school through the lens of a ‘90s teen movie, I asked for tips from middle school and high school educators in the Washington, D.C., area’s highlyranked Montgomery County School District, some of whom I work with and others who taught me.
80 BACK TO SCHOOL | FALL 2016