No More Pencils, No More Books – And No More Middle School!

 

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Today is the last day my youngest attended middle school. (It’s also the last day of my oldest’s summer vacation! He starts summer term at the university on Monday.) My youngest had their promotion ceremony yesterday (8^th grade graduation). When I shared pictures and a video from it on Facebook, I got to talking with some people about everything that my youngest has been through during middle school.

 

To say the least, middle school was NOT easy for them. They experienced bullying, harassment for being gay, a physical altercation with someone trying to steal something from them, problems with teachers, their mental health issues affecting their learning experience, and a serious sense of feeling lost and alone. (This was made worse when they started losing friends due to their social awkwardness and poor social skills.) I honestly contemplated transferring them to another school because it got so bad. But they insisted that they wanted to stay. Maybe they knew things would get better – and they did, thanks to their amazing friends and a select few teachers who advocated for them.

 

Despite the bad things they endured in middle school, there were some good things that happened: They came out to us as gay, they discovered more about their identity, they made some really strong and long-lasting friendships with kids they could really connect with, they made a turnaround in their failing grades and managed to start earning some A’ s on their report cards, and they discovered a love of acting by taking Drama twice. (At this point, they have their sights on a future career as an actor, but we’ll see how that goes. They also LOVE cars and they are very good at auto mechanics. A career change might happen later on. They have also been pondering a career in technology, since they are also good with tech stuff.)

 

There are other good things that happened in middle school. They participated in the Robotics Club, in which they also competed in the Robotics LEGO League at Oregon State University in Corvallis; they had fun participating in the Rock Climbing Club; they found kinship and connections with other students through GSA; they briefly participated in track; and they had fun participating in Craft Club.

 

I don’t know why I thought about any of that good stuff while I was thinking about the bad stuff they went through in middle school. But maybe it’s because my own years in middle school were challenging. I mean, I was a student in middle school when I lost my hearing! I had to change schools and I lost friends. The school I was transferred to was horrible. The teacher mocked my deafness and some of the kids bullied me. Thankfully, my parents transferred me to another school, and I LOVED this one. I did really well there and got along with everyone. Still, I ended up in yet another school after we moved out of state – losing friends again – and then we moved back to California and I finished middle school there.

 

But this blog post is not about MY middle school years! Yeah, they were pretty rough. My oldest had some rough middle school years, too.

 

But my youngest had ONE middle school experience that neither of us had: A pandemic. Covid hit sometime after my youngest started middle school and all the schools shut down. At first, distance learning went well, but then it didn’t go so well. We had connection problems like crazy and my youngest was not receiving the codes to log in at Zoom or Canvas or any of the other programs that were being used. They ended up missing out on a lot of schoolwork because of this, unfortunately.

 

So it was a HUGE relief when schools opened again. How nice to be able to go back to school! They first started with a hybrid model, in which students attended schools on certain days then used distance learning for the other days. Then it was entirely in-person again.

 

Of course, transitioning back to in-person learning did not go well. Eventually, some staff and students did catch Covid. While other schools in our area shut down after even one case of Covid, their school stayed open. I was partly surprised and partly exultant by this. I loved their whole “we will press on!” attitude even when Covid struck. It sort of reflected the attitude we all started to adopt later on, that Covid is now a part of life. Some people do not survive it but some people do. I know many people who have had (and still have) Covid, and they have survived.

 

Thankfully, and AMAZINGLY, no matter how many times Covid struck my youngest’s school, they never caught it. Yes, there were MANY times they fell ill with symptoms and of course they had to get tested for Covid. But every time they were tested, all the tests were negative. Phew! What a relief! (Yes, we are fully vaccinated and boosted.)

 

So it was with a huge sigh of relief that I attended the promotion ceremony yesterday. Yes, I was relieved – relieved that they made it! We made it. Seriously, it felt like a battle they had to get through. Those were some very trying three years – with the bulk of one of those years spent on distance learning! (My oldest did not get to have a traditional high school graduation because of schools being shut down due to Covid; the ceremony was held via Zoom!) It’s over and we are all very happy and relieved that they made it through to the end.

 

So, now they are done with middle school. On to high school!

 

Let’s hope that high school will be better.