On The Subject Of The Mental And Emotional Health Of Middle School Students (Sort of.)

So, this is what happened at school today. I’m in 8th grade at a VERY non-traditional school. We don’t have detention, we call our teachers by their first names and everyone who has been to another school says it’s very different from other schools. The main difference between here and other schools is the school’s Philosophy. The school was founded by two holocaust survivors fleeing Nazi Germany. They decided to open a school to raise children in a way so that the holocaust would never repeat itself.

I’ve been going here since pre-school (the school goes from preschool to 12th grade) and since the moment I first set foot in my preschool classroom I’ve been taught the value of human life, how to celebrate our diversity, and many ethical lessons I don’t care to go into great detail about. I always felt that we all live up to the Philosophy and that we’ve all developed into kind and wonderful human beings.

The school is seperated into two campuses. Preschool through 5th grade, and 6th through 12th. It was at the Upper School that we first started getting actual letter grades and that’s when I started noticing the changes. Almost all of my friends, who I’d been close with since preschool, seemed to change. They started swearing, seemed technology obsessed, and had developed a disregard for all humans besides themselves. This change ushered in the age of Not Caring. They complained about everything but didn’t care enough to actually do anything to change the way things are run. Student opinions are taken into account at my school but only if they say something other than, “This sucks.”

Today, we had an assembly lasting the whole second half of the day. Apparently, someone had drawn a swatzika and written ‘Hail Hitler. Kill Jews.’ in the boys bathroom. I was shocked, but not as shocked as I should’ve been. It took me a while to figure out why but I think I’ve got it now. I don’t think this would’ve happened at the Lower School. Not just because the kids are younger, but because they still think about others first.

It was then that I realized that at the Lower Campus, the teachers seem to put the kids emotional and mental health before how they are performing in school. At the Upper School, this is reversed. The teachers still care, but grades and homework have become the center of my life. I wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, go to bed. Homework, sleep, repeat. I remembered that I used to LOVE school! And that I haven’t been truly happy during school in over three years. I can’t remember the last time I was able to come home and just do what I want, or do nothing at all. Now, I wake up and the first thing I think is, “Ugh. I have to go to school today.”

I think that Middle School is the time when children’s mental and emotional health needs the most attention and this is the time when they’re not getting that attention. This revelation made me burst into tears and I couldn’t stop crying for the better part of an hour. Luckily, I have a friend who can always make me laugh no matter how depressed I am. It is when he trys to annoy me and tolerates my dead baby jokes that I feel the happiest I’m able to be at school, and he was able to cheer me up.

In reflection, I don’t think any of the kids in Middle School are happy anymore. I think that’s why the aforemetioned hate speech was written on the wall, and that’s why no one cares anymore.

If you’ve read all of this. Thank you. If you are in Middle School at this time and agree with me, please share this message with others. We need to try and help Middle School kids feel happy once more. I don’t know how. But, we need to try.