This year, with the ongoing construction, we’ve had to accept the presence of Middle Schoolers in our everyday lives. They have taken up residence on the Tundra, are now using our lunchroom and library, and, as Mr. Kowalik announced recently, have officially joined some Upper School classes.
Potomac makes an effort to keep its community connected across divisions, but the Upper School can still feel quite isolated from the rest of the school. Administrators say fixing this issue by putting Middle Schoolers into Upper School classes is well worth any potential downsides.
“We haven’t done anything to specifically prepare the students for these higher-level classes, but the social benefits will far outweigh the educational losses the students will face. While it’s certainly possible that fourth graders won’t be able to keep up with Honors Spanish 3, it’s far more likely that Upper Schoolers will exercise their leadership skills and make sure that the younger students succeed,” Middle School Head Mr. Mathews said.
Middle schoolers seem to harbor a wide variety of reactions, from casual acceptance of the policies to complete disappointment about the difficulty of the Upper School curriculum.
“Today, I learned about butterflies in science class, times tables in math, the Phrygian Half-Cadence in Advanced Music Theory, and baseball in P.E!” Joey Jacobs ‘33 exclaimed as he trotted out of the middle school village and to his bus at 3:15. By contrast, Sarah Schumacher ‘34 said that she “didn’t really get” her Honors Physics class and that Algebra 2 made her “want to go home.”
One anonymous upperclassman took a more direct approach to his criticism of the new policy, remarking that it is “actually the stupidest thing they could’ve done,” and calling the people who made the decision “braindead.”
The actual statistics of how Middle Schoolers are faring will come out alongside first-semester report cards, the format of which has been modified for Middle Schoolers, who, in the past, haven’t received letter grades.
When questioned about the group of crying eleven-year-olds leaving his Advanced Multivariable Calculus class, Mr. Tkach only chuckled and muttered, “fools, all of them.”
