We have to buy our own school supplies (which I know most people do starting from Kindergarten, but we've never actually done it before). And this is serious. Everything has to be just right - binders, notebooks, pencils.
We also now have to deal with the lockers, learning how to open them, get the right stuff out, close them and get into the right classroom, all in 3 minutes. Then there is this business of remembering which classroom we have to be in.
And this is just academic stuff. There is more.
There is the fact that most of the classmates now have cell phones, and even though they are not allowed until classes are over, the minute they are over the phones are out and texting begins. This was such a problem in the first few school days that parents started a debate whether 6th-graders should be even allowed to have cell phones. It was serious.
And most importantly: "There was a revolution today. 3 boys went and sat with the girls during recess. No dares or anything, they just went and sat there." Revolution. That was the exact word that was used. Of course my son was not a part of the "revolution", but I had to tell him a secret - in a few months, he probably will be.
Last night, it was Back-to-school night for middle-school parents. Since it was my first time as a middle-school mom, I, along with other first time middle-school parents, felt exactly like our kids felt at their first middle school day. We were all given a schedule of which room we have to be in at what time to meet with a teacher, and bewildered parents run all over the school started. Each teacher was given exactly 7 minutes to say whatever the hell she wanted to say, which meant that as soon as a teacher got to the 3d sentence a polite voice from above told us that this particular conference is over and we need to move to the next room. Needless to say there was no time for questions, remarks or concerns. But there sure was a lot of running around. By the end of the night I felt like I just run a marathon, and I didn't have an opportunity to ask why middle-schoolers are not learning geography. This was not a good way to conduct a Back-to-school night. I don't know exactly how it might have been done differently, but I definitely know that wasn't it.
Most 6th-grade parents are scared and concerned, especially those for whom it's their first child entering middle school. How is their little offspring handling it? Does he know what he needs for each particular subject? Does he know what room he is supposed to be in at any given moment? Does he have time to get there? (There is a penalty for tardiness).
I don't worry so much. When I was in school, our middle school format began not in 6th, but in 4th grade. We also had a lot more subjects. We didn't just have science. We had physics, chemistry, and biology, all in different rooms, all with a different teacher. We also had geography. We had grammar and literature, separately. We also had a foreign language. That's a lot of subjects. And a lot of homework.
Yesterday, my son's advisor was concerned about homework. "Be sure to record how much a child spends doing homework, and be sure to let us know if it's more than an hour and a half, because that's too much." Yeah, I wish my teachers were that concerned. I did my homework for at least 2 hours every day, and I was a straight A student, it was easy for me. There was just a lot of it. So far, I have not seen my son spending more than 15 minutes doing his homework. Something must be wrong there, it's middle school. Am I not paying attention? This is serious.
Only now do I understand how easy it was to be a parent in elementary school. There was only one teacher (or rather 2 working as a team) to deal with, only one set of rules. I had no idea when my child did his homework, but I knew that it was done. I was also quite sure that by the end of 3rd grade he knew all his elementary school curriculum, and although it was not such a good thing, I didn't have to worry about him falling behind. Now, it's different. I have to pay more attention to what he is studying and when. Every day I need to check what he is doing in each subject. I need to worry about grades - but I don't, at least for now. I need to worry about long-term projects. And most importantly, I have to worry about the revolution. That is very serious.
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