This American Life: Middle School

MiddleSchool

A few weeks ago, I paid a visit to my old middle school with a group of my friends.  Everything in it seemed to devour my senses and shoot my mind instantly back to both the beautiful and painful memories of those terribly wonderful years.  Every teacher we visited was blown away; each took a step back and a double take as though the young boys and girls they had mentored and taught through those three years were all in some kind of foreign, nearly unrecognizable bodies.  One exclaimed in awestruck surprise, “You all look like real people!”  Needless to say, the middle school years seem to be a time dedicated in every life to growth and development in nearly every aspect of a human being.  Like in any life stage, the choices made in the middle school years help determine the direction of a person’s life and the path they choose to follow.

The Acts 2 and 4 (“Anchor Babies” and “Stutter Step”) of the “Middle School” podcast from This American Life looks into what is really on the minds of Middle School students.  In “Anchor Babies”, instead of reporting the weather and daily lunch menu, the kids on the morning announcements at Parkville Middle School near Baltimore were given a chance to write up a newscast on subjects and social matters that were important to them.  These video announcements mock real newscasts with back drops, theme music, green screens and the whole nine yards; not only is the appearance the same, but they all “tend to follow a formula” like local news.  When the kids were given a chance to report what mattered to them, the results were utterly widespread.  Reports varied from a debate over the appropriate age for trick or treating, rumors about a boy getting suspended for clapping in the lunch room, and an opinionated analysis of the appearance of the new Martin Luther King Jr. statue in Washington D.C.  Everything from concern about dirtying UGG boots to potatoes being permanently removed from school lunches weighed heavily on the intriguingly sporadic minds of the pre-teen world. 

In “Stutter Step”, the focus was taken away from the academics and fully focused on the chaotic social realm.  Middle School dances are the “epicenters of middle school awkwardness”.  A boy named Ethan in a striped button-up shirt picked out by his mother, spoke of his strong desire to slow dance that heavily contradicted his immense fear that he “won’t do it right”.  Ethan, like many of the other kids, aimed to have a good time while still remaining low key enough to keep any tragically humiliating events out of the lime-light.  The exited, nervous, quick, high-pitched, and giggly chatter among the uncertain students filled with a steady presence and repetition of the word “like” defines nearly all of the verbal communication put forth by the middle school students.       

The petty stress, naïve uncertainty, immature arguments, shallow friendships, and constantly high pitched speech depicts middle school as not only a period of mental advancement, but also physical and emotional development as the ambiguous leap from childhood to adulthood is uneasily embraced.  A mental, physical, and emotional foundational base is laid in those tear filled, frustrating, smelly, pimply, and complicated years.  The insecure, undefined battle of middle school is bound to hurl people off-balanced and uneasily into the realm of adulthood by opening their social and intellectual understanding beyond the bounds of mere trifling childhood.  Looking back, I can see how my middle school years molded and shaped me into the person I am today.  The experiences and growth experienced by the kids in the podcast and everyone else at one time is the cocoon that transforms what was once a caterpillar of a child into a butterfly of an adult.