Do not walk in holding hands with your mother.
Make sure you are not wearing undies with pictures of princesses or Elmo.
Do not hang around guys who look as if they’d like to beat you up or girls who could star in the next mean-girl movie.
These are just a few suggestions for 11- and-12-year-olds about to make the giant leap from fifth to sixth grade — and elementary to middle school.
School counselor Suzanne Wendorf describes the passage as the biggest transition students will make in their educational lifetimes.
“It’s even bigger than going to college,” Wendorf says. “By the time kids go to college, they’re older, and they can handle it. Eleven- and 12-year-olds are very young.” Very young, to juggle as many as eight classes, two lockers, a school two or three times the size of their elementary campus, heightened academic expectations and a student body that ranges in size and physical development from little kid to practically grown. Plus an environment with more rules, firmer discipline and more serious consequences.
“The transition is very scary,” family therapist Jeremy Pierce says. “The sixth-graders have lots of different worries about fitting in.”
To help, we solicited survival tips from several Texas school officials, including Pierce in Baytown, Wendorf at Bush Middle School in San Antonio, Samuel Maldonado and Cary Cooper, both administrators at Houston’s Lanier Middle School, and Louise O’Donnell, a psychologist with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Their advice:
1. Walk that fine line between maintaining your individuality and blending in.
Says Pierce, “Take a look at what you’re wearing and how you walk and present yourself. Ask yourself, ‘Am I doing anything that would set me apart and make me look very, very different?’ ” Best advice: Tone it down.
2. Adults like to think kids won’t be bullied or tempted by drugs in school. But if that does happen, tell an adult who will lend a hand, hold your story in confidence and it will not cause you even more trouble, O’Donnell says.
3. If you’re invited to tours or orientation sessions at your new school, by all means go.
4. There will be times when you’ll feel as if you’re the only one on the planet suffering and struggling as you are. Not!
5. Make friends. Extend yourself. And while you’re at it, remember it’s not all about you. Focus on them.
6. Sign up for the school activities that speak to you. You will meet like-minded kids.
7. Ask questions, lots of them. If you are getting behind, talk to your teacher or counselor.
8. Say somebody does pick on you in the hall. Don’t engage. Keep going.
9. Get organized, now and forever. Life will be way easier if you carry a planner.
10. There’s lots of trash talk about middle school. Remember, most of it isn’t true.
