Middle School Culture Shock

I wish someone had told me about middle school when my oldest child was still in 5th grade. It’s not that I didn’t talk to people about it; I did. But some people told me about the drugs and (unbelievably) the sexual activity going on in middle school. Another mother told me about how her son was mercilessly bullied until he was contemplating suicide. When I heard these issues being discussed about middle school, I was reasonably confident that my son was prepared and would not be affected by them, being a smart kid, who is strong and popular. But no one had prepared me for the fundamental culture shock of middle school.

I knew that the school was much larger than the elementary school and that the children changed classes, and therefore had many different teachers. However, I didn’t know that the attitude of the teachers and the administration would be so different. I want to make clear that the middle school is not far from where we live, so it draws from our neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods, including everyone who went to my kids’ elementary school plus kids from other elementary schools, so it is not a regional or socio-economic difference. It’s more basic than that.

For example, in elementary school, when a kid seems to be having trouble with either grades or behavior, or sometimes for no reason at all, the teacher will contact the parent to arrange a parent-teacher conference to discuss and resolve the situation. In middle school, there is no such reaching out by the teachers. Maybe it’s because they have so many students that they see every day, but if the parent does not initiate contact, there is no contact between the parent and the teacher even if there is a need for the child to get some help.

Another major difference is in how they handle discipline. For example, the kids have to change classes and they have five minutes to get from one classroom to another. If they dawdle and are late, instead of going to the office and getting a late pass, they are sent to the Tardy Room, where they basically sit there and do nothing. Then it is the kid’s responsibility to approach the teacher and ask for the missed classwork to do as homework.

So the idea is that you take kids who are a bit challenged in the area of responsibility and rule following and you allow them to miss class, first of all. This reminds me of the Song of the South books I read as a child, where the rabbit tells the fox “Please, whatever you do, don’t throw me in that briar patch!” So the fox throws him in there, exactly where the rabbit makes his home. Oh, no! You mean I don’t have to sit in class and I get to hang out with my friends and goof off? Please don’t make me go there again!

Then you put the same responsibility-challenged kid in a position where he has to be proactive about following up with his teacher to get the assignment. Basically, it’s a recipe for failure.

The guidance counselor told me that many kids coming in to middle school for the first time get carried away with all of the relative freedom of movement that they have there in comparison to elementary school, and this causes problems for them, particularly with boys. But apparently, this is something that parents have to find out for themselves, a sort of trial by fire.

The lesson in all this, I suppose, is that parents need to be much more nosy and on top of their kids once they get to middle school, just at an age where kids’ hormones are kicking in and they are the most resistant to overbearing parenting or restrictions on their activities. Just another reason why parenting is the hardest job in the world…