Do feeder middle schools prepare you for high school?

Jakai Spikes, Staff Writer

In recent time, a lot of students come to high school not really prepared. I wanted to ask a couple of my friends who went to different feeder middle schools on their thought about this subject. Did your middle school prepare you well for Roswell?

I decided to ask Amber Barton first because I attended the same middle school that she did, which was Crabapple Middle School. I asked, “Do you think that Crabapple prepared you well enough for high school?” She hesitated and thought for a while before she responded, “I don’t think so. They had very strict rules, and told us that this is how it was gonna be when we attended Roswell, but when I came, I realized that all of their rules didn’t apply here at all.”

I decided to dig deeper and figure out what exactly she meant by her statement. She replied with “For example, they took away the recovery policies and gave us the excuse that ‘Roswell isn’t gonna have these forgiving policies’. But when I got to Roswell we all saw that wasn’t true. So, all of this time we could have been improving our grades, but they took that away from us, instead they should’ve let us have it because in a way that would’ve been really preparing us for Roswell.” Ending the interview I asked her what thing that she would change about the system. “One thing that I would change is the teachers, it’s very hit or miss. They don’t seem very passionate about teaching, having a personal bond and they tend to underestimate our abilities. This leaves the students feeling not motivated to want to try at all, which applies to why we are not prepared” Amber said.

After a holiday chorus concert in Crabapple (December 1st, 2016) Left to right: Liz Bramlet, Caroline Whaley, Casper DeLuna, Amber Barton, Emma Bullman, Zoe Rosenberg (all are sophomores this year)

Kennedy Walls attended the other feeder middle school which was Elkins Middle School. I started off with the same question: “Do you think your middle school played a role in you being prepared for high school?” Kennedy responded by saying, “Socially, no. Although, academically, yes. The reason why I say not socially is because they always had the hallways sectioned off, which made it hard for us to see our friends and to even meet new people. Unlike here at Roswell, where you see pretty much everyone and you’re forced to speak to people”. Nodding my head in agreement, I asked, “And in what way did they prepare you for high school academically?” She replied, “The teachers always pushed you to be the best that you can be; we would pick our own classes to what personally matched us. And, if they thought that we should go to a higher level, they always pushed us to go higher. So, personally there’s nothing I would change academically they prepared us really well and I had a great experience!”