Honest Reflections — Aptos Middle School
To wrap up this little series of mine, I’m going to write about middle school, high school, and college along with some random post (maybe?) about coding. I hope to do a little compare and contrast, but my memories of middle school are faulty.
What was the purpose of all of this, you might ask? Though I’m just one person, what I really wanted to break down was my experience in the public education system. I spent my entire life attending public schools in San Francisco before attending UC Davis — my college memories are still fresh, and my high school memories are somewhat reliable, but I feel like those three years in middle school are what really shaped a lot of us.
There’s one thing that Ben told me then, and that another friend repeated right before we graduated from college: Don’t put people on pedestals, and don’t put people in boxes. Excessive praise only alienates, and oversimplification narrows our view of the world. I’ve been thinking about how this applies to experiences, and how we reduce and rearrange the past. I want to write about it before I forget it, and it’s better late than later.
Before we continue, an explanation on one thing: When we applied for a magnet high school called Lowell, the application completely ignored 6th grade. It’s almost like they pretended 6th grade never existed. I will follow suit in this post, and conveniently ignore the fact that I was ever a 6th-grader, that 2006 was a year, and that anything in 6th grade happened.
What I Didn’t Like
If being rude was a punishable offense, everyone would have to be pardoned for the things they did in middle school. When I think of all the rude things people said to me, and all of the rude things I said to other people, it makes me want to write all of middle school off as a dark time. I realized, at least in passing conversations, that I wasn’t alone in feeling this way — one of my college instructors simply summarized middle schoolers like this: They don’t know yet what is socially acceptable, so they just say the meanest things possible.
Some people are still like that in high school, but they at least feel bad about it.
Here are some other things I didn’t like about Aptos, specifically:
- The 7th grade history/English curriculum
- The 7th grade science/PE/orchestra curriculum
- The 7th grade math book
- 7th Grade
- One of our four PE teachers. You all know which one I’m talking about
- Anything that in any way reminds me of the ISN (pictured above)
What I Liked
We had a core class in 7th grade, and we had a slightly different (there really was a lot of overlap) core class in 8th grade. This means we saw the same people in all of our academic classes, and we got to know each other pretty well.
In retrospect, I’d say that the people I met were…pretty great. At least for middle schoolers.
- Though I have some mixed feelings about my 8th grade history/English teacher (which I elaborate on later), I think that his English class was a turning point for me. I had no interest in literature/writing until then
- We had some very expensive violins
- I think I overdid it with the Ben worship, almost acting like Ben was some sort of god, so I’m just going to write Ben
- At least for me, most of the classes were legitimately challenging and…um…legitimate
First Teacher: 7th Grade English/History
I wanted to focus here on three middle school teachers: One whom I didn’t like, one whom I had mixed feelings about, and one whom I basically liked. I’m leaving out one 8th-grade teacher I really liked, but his class was really easy and therefore less memorable.
Here’s how the teacher I didn’t like did things:
- We ditched the traditional route and mostly learned history by drawing pictures and carrying out unconventional activities
- We learned literature by reading it, but also by composing original poetry, fiction, and plays
- The experience consisted of videos, presentations, acting, and a wide variety of other lessons that constantly changed in format
When I write it like that, it sounds kind of awesome. Instead of ranting about why it wasn’t, let me just compare it to Mr. Benedicto’s high school class. Mr. Benedicto is someone I really liked.
- Mr. Benedicto had us do unconventional activities as well. For example, he had us take on roles and simulate the government — we would earn more points if we got more bills passed
- Still, the academic foundation was there. He read all of our work, thoroughly, and seemed to genuinely enjoy teaching and commenting
- It’s actually really impressive how much he cared about everyone. He would never pick favorites, or say things that were rude or intended to be hurtful
- He was unquestionably competent. At no point did I question whether or not he was qualified to be a teacher, or if the school would be better off with his immediate termination and banning from all classrooms
I know that the way I feel about my 7th grade English/history teacher is faulty, and likely reinforced by early teenage angst (and Linkin Park). Maybe I should just stop. It’s not like I just made this post to rant about people who were mean to me ten years ago.
…I think.
Second Teacher: 7th and 8th grade math/science
This was the most interesting teacher, in my opinion, so much so that I wrote a short story about him with the aid of a random name generator. Don’t read it…it’s a block of text and it ends up being more about college. I just wanted to explain how much of an impression he had.
Still, I don’t want this post to get too long. Let me just make some bulleted experiences.
High Points
- That time in high school when I remembered what he was trying to explain about z angles (Mr. Ferraro: “This is a Z-Monster, and these are its armpits”)
- That time in college when I remembered what he was trying to explain about photosynthesis (“If you remember nothing else from my class, remember the equation for photosynthesis.” SHIT.)
- That time in college when I remembered what he was trying to explain about the importance of mathematics (not ringing a bell right now)
- That time two months ago when I gave a technical presentation and randomly thought about how far I had come since that science test
Low Points
- That time he stopped the class for almost an hour because he was upset about talking, but the person who had been talking remained oblivious (guess who that idiot was?)
- That time we had a class-long debate because he would accept 23.0, but not 23, as an answer on a test
- That time we took a math class and he read out the names of everyone who got every question wrong
- The geometry unit. If we had this, which was made by Mr. Ferraro, we would have been good
Speaking of Mr. Ferraro, whose class I also really liked, here are some things Mr. Ferraro did that I think this guy should have:
- When Mr. Ferraro called on people and they got the wrong answer, he would guide them toward the right one with helpful hints. He wouldn’t just pause forever
- He had a number of useful analogies that were kind of amazing in how clear they made things (that Z-monster could have helped tremendously)
- He was enthusiastic, engaging, and exciting. His lessons were given in a way that made us want to be in the room
Was this teacher really that hard? Am I exaggerating his difficulty? I feel like I’m not. I feel like he was actually really, really hard.
You know who did well in that class? Ben.
Moving along.
Third Teacher: 8th Grade English/History
I’m tired of this “everyone’s a winner” thing. Real life isn’t like that.
— The teacher I am about to write about
And here we are. This post is already way too long, and I have a feeling it might get a lot longer.
There are a few rules that we learn over time about how to interact with people. You should never insult a person’s character, or say mean things behind his/her back to people who can definitely serve as messengers, or insult a person’s parents. Can you imagine if politicians were like that? It would be chaos.
My 8th grade English/history teacher broke all of these rules, so why do I like him so much? At the time, I had some really mixed feelings — he was nice to the vast majority of people in my class, but really tore down some friends in other classes. Unlike 7th grade, this class consisted of listening to lectures while taking notes, taking tests that made up the majority of our grades, and writing lengthy papers. Sounds dry in comparison, but you know what that’s like?
College.
Things he taught us:
- Don’t write papers with a template. Get your ideas down — organization is important, but a paper isn’t simply a series of answers to questions that has to be confined to some formula
- Literature is art. You can find books that people have written on and still make points that no one has made before
- History is complex and has many perspectives. Don’t restrict yourself to narrow-minded biases, and understand that in a war or conflict, both sides will have their own justifications
- Grammar is important. Even now, I can imagine him tearing down this post and putting a red mark for all the grammatical mistakes
He didn’t say it like that, though. He had a way of speaking that was a lot more entertaining.
He was blunt. He liked to swear. He was as harsh and brutally honest when talking to students as he was when he lectured on historical figures. He held nothing back, and he liked what he did.
The only reason I’m using the past tense is that he retired relatively recently. He’s fine.
He made his class a competition. He hung up papers and book reports that he thought were exceptional, and he also arranged them by how good they were. Five (?) people in our class received A’s with circles, consistently, which were like A+’s. What I really should have done, if I could have gone back, was read all of the ones that got circles and learn by positive example. I only thought of it as a competition…it apparently never occurred to me that maybe he hung them up so that people could read and learn from them.
You know who got a lot of A’s with circles? Ben.
Closing Thoughts
This is already the longest post in the series. I didn’t write about music, even though it’s what I remember being most interested in, and I didn’t write a lot about the other students.
I’ve kept up with some of them, but not everyone.
I think back on middle school, sometimes, because everything just seemed so blunt and honest. It’s almost a breath of fresh air to think back on that. It’s like Facebook with a dislike button.
Which isn’t to say that I miss it. We were at our most uncertain time. We could have become anything at that point, and we didn’t know yet what we were good at or passionate about or even where we would end up in ten years.
And it has been ten years, hasn’t it?
Here’s to Aptos. You were fine…for a middle school.
