By Flora Lepage, Year 10
Transitioning from Middle School to Secondary School is a big moment for students as almost everything changes. Different buildings, teachers, schedules, and different priorities. Year 8 students are getting prepared throughout their last year in Middle School for the new environment and expectations of the Secondary School but there are still numerous surprises and challenges students often face when transitioning. As a student in Year 10 and soon entering Year 11, I have faced such challenges and had to learn on my own in order to fully adjust.
The main challenge but also advantage of Secondary is the independence that students gain from the beginning of Year 9 till graduation. Teachers continue to steer us in the right direction but it depends on us, the students, to manage our time correctly, to figure out what study technique works best for each student. It is also up to each student to come to class on time and be prepared with all the material needed to properly learn. As studying begins to become more and more frequent and demanding in students’ everyday lives as they move up in grades, it is very important to learn proper time management. When I first started in Year 9 and realized how much more studying was needed in order to succeed in my classes in comparison to Middle School I was extremely stressed since I did not know which technique was best for each class. As the months passed, I began to see after some trial and error what worked best for me in order to study and still have time for activities and friends.
Another point that came as a shock to me is the difference in the importance of grades. In Middle School, from a certain age students began to receive grades and became accustomed to the idea of every piece of work being returned with a number on the paper. But entering Secondary, I understood that grades mean a lot more and conduct our habits in each class and outside of class in order to achieve the best grades possible for each person. Even though grades play a very important part in our learning and show our capabilities in different subjects, Year 9 students must not worry about this too much. Year 9 can almost be seen as a trial year, students have entered this new stage in the school but have a whole year to be able to adjust to the different aspects before entering Year 10, where grades begin to count. And already in Year 10 many of us focus on the grades needed for university.
Leaving Middle School is a bittersweet experience, leaving the safety and comfort of the building and teachers and entering a whole new side of the school where we are more and more on our own and studying counts for our choices in the future. The students at Ecolint are lucky to be part of this amazing program that prepares us from a very early age until we are ready to enter the world that we are sheltered from as kids.
