Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9308250301
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``I got in trouble for throwing food yesterday,'' said sixth-grader Sebert Paul Arnold, as he ate alone in the cafeteria. It wasn't the first time.
``I love throwing things,'' he said with an insouciant smile, undimmed even after Mike Akers, an assistant principal, came by to check on him.
James Poore of West Salem said his year was pretty good, with his grades rising above the F's and D's of last year and his outlook much improved. But he, too, tasted discipline, spending two days on in-school suspension for putting mayonnaise on someone's car (a bum rap, he claimed) and another day for throwing food in the cafeteria.
``The way they punish you, they shouldn't be so hard,'' he said.
Jennifer Flynn, who is 14 and in the seventh grade, said she'd also been suspended.
``The wrong place at the wrong time,'' she shrugged, by way of explanation. ``I'm not too proud of it.'' Her folks weren't so happy, either.
Even Amanda Washenberger, the student council vice president, found herself in detention hall.
``They caught me skipping,'' she said.
Don't get the idea that all of the confession words were filled with repentance. No, some of the tale-tellers seemed pleased as they described their exploits, to the merriment of their friends. Probably, they were happy just to have survived.
Everyone seemed excited in those final days. Students talked louder. They rushed more briskly through the halls. The amount of arm-punching and other antics appeared to be at a high.
The principal - especially the principal - Jerry Campbell, could not conceal his eagerness for school to let out.
``It's the same thing every year,'' he said, as he sat at a table in the cafeteria during lunchtime and sold tickets to the school's final dance. ``We've got the opening and closing down pat. It's the in-between that we all have problems with.''
And the teachers?
``We are all ready for the year to end,'' said Margaret Humphrey, who commands some eighth-graders.
``At this point, we're all ready,'' echoed Edna Kennedy, purveyor of seventh-grade math.
``We're ready. We're ready,'' said Chuck Benson, who teaches seventh-grade English and social studies.
You'd have thought they were ready, or something.
``I can't wait till it's over,'' said student Jason Smith, as he made an airplane out of balsa wood and tissue paper in Tom Chester's technology class.
Matthew Wahlberg, a seventh-grader, felt the same way, though he had had a lot of fun. ``I've made some new friends. I've made better grades this year than last. I think I've studied harder.''
As a 13-year-old, he'd had fewer hassles with older kids than he'd had the year before. And next fall, he'll be an eighth-grader, a king of the school, so to speak. He's looking forward to that.
The feelings were unmistakable - and so were the sights and the sounds.
``It gets so you can close your eyes and tell what day it is and what part of the year it is,'' said Eve Deegan, a teacher of reading and social studies to seventh-graders. She has been at it since 1956, minus 10 years to rear four children of her own.
``At this age,'' she said, ``it's hard for them to conceal their excitement.''
It's heartening to see how some of them have developed. Last fall there was a sixth-grade boy who quietly admitted to being afraid - afraid he'd be picked on, afraid kids would tease him about his name, afraid he'd get lost as he moved around the building.
The other day, taller and more confident, he cheerfully traded shoulder punches with other guys his age, all of them clad in the shorts, T-shirts and athletic shoes that constitute the adolescent's uniform.
There was a boy who earnestly spoke of his improvement in grades and behavior, attributing it to the Ritalin he had started taking for his hyperactivity. He seemed sincere and relieved to be showing progress - though Ritalin is a therapy that many parents try to avoid.
Of course, there were some students who were as belligerent the other day as they were when school began. Listening to them, you cringed to think of the reactions they'll encounter as they make their way into a tougher, less forgiving world. You hoped they would learn life's lessons with a minimum of pain.
And there were a few kids who made you want to throw up your hands. Earlier this year, one girl was feisty and outspoken - and nothing but trouble, school officials said, their patience obviously exhausted. The other day, she was in turmoil again, her name prominent among the disciplinary reports glimpsed on an assistant principal's desk.
But there also were happy ones. It's refreshing, for sure, to hear someone like Whitney Penn say, ``I like the boys, and all the teachers are pretty nice, and I like my friends.''
Or Jill Pinkney talk about the train ride she enjoyed on a field trip and the sixth-grade picnic she was looking forward to the next day. Or Shawna King, on the honor roll all year, quietly admit the prospect of algebra in the future makes her a little scared.
\ More than 800 youngsters go to the middle school, from all kinds of backgrounds and with all kinds of personalities. What you think about, after visiting with them 15 or 20 times, is how independent they seem, and how difficult it is for parents to understand what they go through every day. There is a secret life among children, where their fears about acceptance, accomplishment and maturity rage, and are seldom brought into public view.
And you think about how hazardous life is for them, as it is for all of us, and how, as Campbell says, choices made in adolescence can affect these kids for the rest of their lives.
The school's hallways bore stark reminders of this in the form of posters seeking money for the families of two students who recently were burned while inhaling fumes from gasoline. Campbell was collecting money for them as well as for the upcoming dance with the Beach Party theme.
Life can be frightening, if you think about it. And yet life must be lived, step by step, and seasoned generously with hope.
\ The students at Andrew Lewis said they would miss their school friends this summer. They would go to the beach, mow lawns, do everything, it seemed, but worry about school. The same was true of the teachers.
Tom Chester, the zealous technology (don't call it shop) teacher, would become the Deck Doctor, a zealous builder of decks and refinisher of basements. Inez Farrell, who teaches English to eighth-graders, was looking forward to appearing in ``Follies'' with Showtimers. Debbie Wheeling, special ed teacher, would play lots of golf. Jim Paxton, the zealous band director, would coordinate the Summer Music Games of Southwest Virginia, a large gathering of drum and bugle corps, and begin drilling the high school band five weeks hence.
Before long, though, they'd start to think again about the students and the school. Margaret Humphrey said the cooler nights and shorter days of late summer would have her contemplating the rules she would enforce and the clothes she would wear once school resumed.
Eve Deegan explained it this way:
``You've kept your grandchildren as long as you can stand it,'' she said. ``You've been on your vacation and worked on your house. My husband is retired, and you get tired of talking to him.''
You're ready to go back to school, where things are often different, and often much the same.
``I don't think the children have changed a bit,'' Deegan said. ``They're still 12-year-old children, no more, no less. They're still kids.''
It's the world that has changed, in ways both big and small. Today's students have fewer siblings than they used to have, down from 10 or 12 in some cases to one or two in most. It goes without saying that more come from one-parent homes and two-job families and other situations that do not fit the ``Ozzie and Harriet'' image.
And, Deegan says, fewer of them seem to be wearing expensive sneakers like Air Jordans, preferring the clunkier, more affordable Chuck Taylors - a trend that she applauds.
Maybe tennis shoes should be the logo of middle schools everywhere - because they truly are the universal factor, the one thing that turns up everywhere, and anywhere..
While the students were in class the other afternoon, Jerry Campbell, the tall, gray-haired principal, was lifting the top off a trash can in a first-floor hallway and sifting through the rubbish.
``I'm looking for a black tennis shoe,'' he said. ``Just one. I found the other one.''
by CNB