Steven's First Week of 7th Grade..

He seems to be adjusting juuussttt fine. He hasn't talked to any girls he didn't know from elementary. He's keeping his head down, and just doing his thing...

He's been asked to come up with a song that already exists describing what school is like for him now... I was poking around the web, looking for lyrics, and stumbled upon a blog describing a music video called Rotten Hell, about 7th grade. Here is the blooger's own words..

I taught seventh grade several years ago. If there is a hell, it must resemble the seventh grade school experience—vicious and seemingly eternal. Statistically, seventh graders learn the least of any grade-school students, and the average person learns less at 12 years old than at any other age during life. Teacher/education specialist/author Chip Wood writes that, developmentally, 12-year-olds probably shouldn't be in a formal school environment at all. Instead, they should all be in an environment resembling a cross between summer camp and the Civilian Conservation Corps. School is hell for twelves, and no place better illustrates man's inhumanity than a middle school cafeteria.

I pray it goes easier for my boy than that.....

In a 2005 commencement speech at Emory, Tom Brokaw said:

" . . . real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high.

The world that you're about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds. "

A Video from a kid about his first dance....