A teacher called the names on the register alphabetically as he made mental notes of identifying characteristics. Teachers are good at this, remembering your name. They have to be. Meanwhile, we searched each other’s wardrobes and faces for some clue as to who would be trusted, who would be deemed a threat. Such are the strategies employed on the first day of high school.
No doubt, this is how it is in any junior high, grade seven classroom. The pecking order established in elementary school will soon be challenged and changed as new members mean the formation of new groups and new rules. I remember some of my fellow adolescents looking thrilled though all I remember feeling was pure, unadulterated terror.
I didn’t want to “walk around the halls” during recess, I didn’t want to go to the cafeteria for an ice cream at ten-thirty in the morning either. I wanted to hide in the classroom with the people I had known since kindergarten. I wanted to remain apart from these much older, bigger teenagers who were constantly making jokes I didn’t understand and then laughing at my ignorance.
I didn’t know how to flirt and I didn’t have any chewing gum which, unbeknownst to me, was equally unacceptable. I was bookish and brazen at the same time, completely dumbfounded when it came to talking to boys in grade nine (my didn’t we swoon over them) and more than anything I wanted to go back to grade six.
That year I quit playing hockey. Everyone thought it was probably for the best. All of a sudden I was an 11-year-old teenager and I hated it.
But it wasn’t a surprise. I had been warned countless times while finishing elementary school that high school would be quite different. All summer long people would echo their disbelief that we would be at Canon Richard’s the next year though no one disbelieved it more than me. I still played with Barbies for gawd’s sake. I had no interest in becoming a teenager and completely embraced it simultaneously. How confusing is that, right?
Best years of my life...I sure hope not.
This clearly defined developmental stage was established nearly a century ago when psychologists made the case for adolescence. Institutions were forced to adapt to the new parameters of development once it became widely accepted that 12 to 18 year olds differ greatly from their younger and older peer groups.
One of these adaptations was to separate primary and elementary aged children from adolescent children as they were deemed to be in entirely distinct stages of development.
In the past decade and a half, Newfoundland has returned to square one with K-12 schools becoming the norm once again in most rural parts of the province. This is the result of decreasing populations first brought on by the collapse of the fishery and perpetuated by global urbanization. Half of the world’s population now resides in urban areas for the first time in our planet’s history.
How the amalgamation of primary-elementary and high schools will affect younger children has been thoroughly debated in the Straits area since it was initially proposed in 1996. Green Island Elementary was first on the chopping block and now with the closure of Straits Elementary we are forced to face a K-12 system.
Canon Richard’s High School in Flowers Cove is undergoing a number of renovations in order to provide a suitable learning environment for all students though the fact remains that the ideal learning environment would have five year olds and 17 year olds under separate roofs. We can only hazard a guess as to what influence the teens will likely have on the younger children though language and disobedience seem to be the obvious first concerns. Not to mention the mess of contradictory emotions involved in newly discovered hormones. Regardless of the arguments for and against the undeniable fact is that this is another indicator of the desperate situation our area is in. It signifies another modern day resource lost. I can’t help but wonder what’s next if no one intervenes and things continue down this path. RCMP? Bank? It will likely be something that we take for granted as an undeniable necessity. Just consider the air ambulance at St. Anthony airport.
One thing though is for certain. If high school is scary for a fourteen year old, it will almost definitely be scary for a seven year old.
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