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Show School '' 'S end j Home j by Dr. 6aryl J. McCarty Executive Secretary 1 Utah Education Association .sfvMf If a child appears bewildered bewild-ered that first day in junior high school, there are reasons. During the student's elementary el-ementary school years, he had one teacher all day long (or most of each day) for the entire school year. The teacher teach-er knew every student well. But in junior high, a student may have seven different teachers. Each of those teachers teach-ers may have about 185 students to teach each day. So it takes teachers longer to learn all the names, and more time to establish friendly relationships. re-lationships. The school is bigger, seven teachers are making assignments assign-ments instead of one, and there's a world of difference between seventh graders and those big, big ninth graders. The newcomers may not have started that "growth spurt" yet, while some ninth graders are more than six feet tall. Recently, parents in Jordan School District voted for an option that is expected to change that situation. The parents voted for "middle schools." A middle school has sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The Jordan idea is to gradually grad-ually detach youngsters from the close student-teacher relationship they had in elementary school. Entering a "middle school" shouldn't be nearly so abrupt a change. For one thing, the sixth graders will spend four periods per-iods with the same teacher or team of teachers. In the seventh grade, the students will spend less time in that situation- and even less in the eighth grade. The middle school program means that students are better matched according to their physical maturity, proponents pro-ponents say. Some parents have expressed ex-pressed concern about the fact that the middle school idea means their children will have four years in the "grownup" "grown-up" atmosphere of high school, instead of three. Others claim the four-year high school, such as those in Salt Lake City, provides a richer program for students. A building shortage pushed Jordan into adopting the middle school program, but educators there maintain that it's an idea with sound educational edu-cational reasons. |