In Seventh Grade Again

This past week, I got to go to school for a day with my 7th grade son. It is an annual tradition in the school district, and it was a lot of fun. I was pleasantly surprised that about half of the students seemed to have at least one of their parents in attendance. While the day offered plenty of opportunities to learn about my son and his classes, teachers and peers, it also provided the chance to reflect on the reasons I am glad I am no longer in Junior High.

Here are some observations from my day at school:

1) As I grow older, the teachers seem to look younger and younger. I could barely tell the difference between some of my son's teachers and the students. I don't remember being taught by fifteen-year-old-looking English teachers...

2) Almost nothing on earth is worse than Junior High Gym class. The locker room, the dressing out, the calisthenics, the coaches, the heat. In my day, coaches "made" you shower after gym so that you wouldn't stink the rest of the day. Most kids complied, but a few found tricky ways to get around the showering thing (like hiding in a toilet stall and getting your hair wet in the sink). Of course, in a boy's locker room, "showers" simply mean a large tube protrudes from a tiled floor, with a ring of water spouts (no dividers or curtains, of course) forming a circle of water. That used to bring up all kinds of interesting dilemmas for seventh graders. These days, it appears, they have just skipped the shower concept all together for regular gym classes. Instead, they deal with the post-gym stench by applying body spray. My son claims that in one of his friend's gym classes, someone lit a match at the end of gym, causing a combustion in the locker room due to all of the body spray vapors.

3) Although I can run a business, I can't do seventh grade math. Or science. Or social studies.

4) As masses of students walked between classes, I took a short-cut through the grass rather than staying on the paved walkway. My son quickly corrected me and warned that they are only allowed to walk on the sidewalks. I looked around and was amazed that nowhere on the entire campus was a student walking on the grass. More than a thousand Junior High students and their parents crammed instead onto the walk ways as they headed to their next class. I asked my son how they enforced the rule. Were there "sidewalk police" that took you to detention if you strayed from the path? I didn't see any. He said he did not know, but he knew there would be trouble if you set foot in the grass. My still-unanswered question is how they get EVERY student to follow this rule but cannot get them to keep any of the other ones. I saw plenty of discipline-worthy rule violations throughout the day, but never once saw anyone step on the (relatively-brown and dead) grass.

5) Something about sitting in 7th grade classes all day made me wonder again what I am going to be when I grow up.

6) The same student archetypes that were present when I was in Junior High still exist today. And I am still afraid of some of them.

7) Although technology changes, the ability of teachers to use it effectively does not. In my day, teachers fumbled to find the on-off switch for the overhead projector. Today, they fumble to find the power button on the dvd player and cool looking computer devices.

8) Student desks will never be comfortable, no matter how advanced our society becomes.

9) One of the greatest gifts of life is that, although we may wish we were young again, we can never go back and re-live our Junior High days. Going back to work when the day was finished was a relief!