Junior High School

Today I worked for 5 hours at my local junior high school as a volunteer assisting with registration. Lest you think I was sloughing my day job, I'm proud to announce that my company has a REALLY cool program called SEED: Serving Education Every Day. We're all adults; we're professionals. We are encouraged to volunteer in our local community to advance educational causes. We even have a SEED employee of the month. So, I'm allowed to volunteer on work time...as long as it's not interfering with my work. So, I'll be working for several hours tonight to catch up ;-)

You should know that junior high was the WORST time in my whole adolescent life. Seriously. I was overly pudgy in 6th grade. I then hit puberty in junior high...which is really a traumatic event (or it was for me). My mom went through her 2nd divorce when I was in junior high (again, another traumatic event). I was trying to find my way in the world, and the world was working against me. I was always on the cusp of being in with the "it" crowd. I had great friends (some of whom are still friends today). I had drama with my friends when they all boycotted my 14th birthday party because I was too bossy. (Not much has changed....with the bossy thing...and I wouldn't give a rats if someone didn't want to come to a party of mine today.)

Broadmoor Junior High School (formerly Broadmoor Intermediate School) in Pekin, Illinois

I am seriously in awe of junior high teachers! I had some wonderful teachers in junior high who really were looking out for me. Holly Brown sticks out in my memory more than the others. Holly was my 8th grade Language Arts teacher. She took me in as her study hall assistant and had me grade the 7th grade papers. She always wrote thoughtful and supportive things in my journal, and she would give me small gifts at Christmas. I think she knew that I needed extra help. I'll never forget her kindness, and I'm seriously tearing up just writing this...and I never tear up!

My kids have had some wonderful junior high teachers, too! I have personally written notes to special teachers who have helped my kids. I don't know why anyone would take on that age group, but the fine teachers at my local school LOVE their jobs and love the kids. We also happen to have some WONDERFUL teachers.

Anyway, I digress. I watched 7th, 8th, and 9th graders come through my registration line for hours....about 125 of them in all. As I observed the junior high folks, their parents and their siblings, I felt thrown back to 1984.

Our little school in Sandy, Utah is pretty diverse for a Utah suburb. We have a vast strata of socio-economic statues and ethnicities.

I saw the dedicated working moms come in dressed for work with their piles of forms and kids in tow.


I saw stay at home moms dressed in their capris and flip flops hauling multiple little ones and disheveled piles of papers.

I saw a lot of dads come in and fill out paperwork with and for their kids. I had one dad come to me for help seriously overwhelmed by the number of forms. He said, "I have 5 kids, and I'm not usually the one who does this." I helped him fill out his paperwork, and as he left the school that day, he made a point to thank me. Trust me, he didn't look old enough to have 5 kids. If I had to guess, he started very young.

I saw moms who only spoke Spanish whose children translated for them.

I saw grandparents who were raising their kids' kids.

I met a foster mom who was overwhelmed because she didn't get the packet in the mail, and seriously, there is A LOT of paperwork that she had to fill out. Our former PTA President compassionately said, "You're doing a good job; don't worry about a thing! You can bring it in tomorrow."

I saw one of those dads with the blue tooth headset who walked through the registration process while chatting on the phone. (I loathe that, by the way! Either be on your phone or be talking to me, not both!)

I could tell a lot about the kids by their parents. That might be judgemental, but it is not meant to be that way. Every parent was the hyperbolic manifestation of someone that I knew in junior high over 25 years ago. As I helped those parents I saw a Jodi Dully, a Becky Innis, a Jenny Cheek, a Gina Cantrell, a Susan Bryan, a Melissa Baer...I "saw" so may who as adults in their 30s and 40s could have been my friends when we were barely hitting puberty.

Then I observed the children of these parents. The 7th graders (especially if they are the first junior high schoolers in their family) were nervous and excited. There was a definite air of maturity in the 9th graders. The 8th graders had earned the rite of passage to 8th grade by surviving the 7th grade. I know many of the kids from my PTA service, and I know many more of them because of my associations in my neighborhood and at church.

As I observed from afar, I thought how much things are still the same in junior high school. I thought how much of our lives is determined by the circumstances in which we are raised. I wondered if these 12, 13 and 14 year old have any idea how much junior high WON'T matter when it is all over. I wondered how many of these kids would take advantage of their privileged circumstances. I wondered how many kids would rise up out of more difficult circumstances and try to make the proverbial "better life" for themselves.

About 20 years ago, there was a popular book and poster titled "Everything I Need To Know, I Learned in Kindergarten." I would retort that, "Everything I need to know about getting through life, I learned by surviving junior high school." Seriously, I consider those three years at Broadmoor Intermediate School so important; those were my formative years. I am still trying to recover from those years; I constantly refer to that time in my life as I talk to my junior high aged girls and help them work through the same trials that I had in the 1980s. Have things changed? Yes, they have. But fundamentally, I think junior high is still that crazy time in your life that is filled with so much growing, so much learning and so much drama! In that way, some things are still very much the same.