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Do You Have the Integrity of a 13-Year Old?
Rediscovering hope in middle school
My day job involves managing the behavior program at a middle school. When I tell people what I do, their most often equates to better you than me. Middle school is assumed to be a jungle of hormones and chaos, a harrowing passage from childhood to adolescence.
It’s a time in life that few adults recall in the amber glow of nostalgia. Most of us remember it as bewildering and awkward, a period when our sense of self swirled in a maelstrom of developmental pressures we didn’t begin to understand.
I assure you, it hasn’t gotten any easier.
Especially when every schoolyard gaffe or personal rite of passage is liable to go viral on Snapchat. The social landscape of middle school, always challenging, is nowadays fraught with peril.
Still, the academic year progresses in recognizable touchpoints. By now the students have settled in; we’ve held Back To School night and the first round of state testing. We are currently in the midst of the campaign for student body president.
Three eighth-graders are running for the office: two girls and one boy, whose names are herein changed for obvious reasons: let’s call them Fred, Sally, and Sue.
