OPINION

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By Gabrielle Dunn

Imagine entering school on your first day of 5th grade, walking into your first period class, and sitting down next to a person of the opposite sex. Crazy, I know, but that was my reality as a student at Haddam Killingworth Middle School in Killingworth, Connecticut. 

When Collegiate Middle Schoolers open the doors to their classrooms on their first day of 5th grade, their demographic looks quite different than anything I had ever experienced. Collegiate students might look up to see a room full of either Free People dresses or Vineyard Vines polos. When I started Middle School, my eyes fell over a sea of brightly colored Under Armor athletic clothes, neon Justice leggings, and bright pink headbands intermingling at the desks all around the room. 

Veterans of Collegiate’s Middle School commonly make jokes about everyone’s inability to interact with the opposite sex. It’s typical to find a polarized class when you walk into freshman and sophomore classrooms in the Upper School, and even in the lunchroom, you can rarely find boys and girls sitting together. I’ve always found it quite strange, coming from a school where it was likely to find boys and girls sitting side-by-side in classes and at lunch. Even scarier, we would play together at recess. 

Students who attended Collegiate’s Middle School explained to me why they thought the administration would keep the classes divided by gender. Austin King (‘20) said he thinks, “Girls mature faster than boys do, and that was one of the reasons they separate our Middle School.” Though these students didn’t have a majority of their classes in mixed-gender classrooms, they often came together for world language and art classes. During these classes, King recalls, “it was interesting to have companions who were more mature than we were, because, in turn, it gave the boys an opportunity to be more mature and mirror our female peers.”

Julia Edwards (‘20), a student who arrived at Collegiate during her freshman year, explained, that, in her middle school experience, “being with boys didn’t offer any distractions that weren’t already present,” and that “it seemed like it was still a normal classroom environment.”   

Public schools and private schools are different for many reasons, and I have attended both. While this is not indicative of all public schools, students at my middle school in Connecticut did not take education as seriously as Collegiate does. Students here are expected to excel in their classes and are held to high standards by their teachers. At my public middle school, students, got away with almost anything imaginable. Upon my arrival to North Mooreland Road, the stories I told during my freshman year Health and Wellness course would frighten and shock the other students in my class. 

I explained the minimal consequences and rules at Killingworth Middle, and many would sit in awe at the things I had witnessed. Edwards, another student in that class, recalled some of the stories she shared about her public school experiences at Midlothian Middle School during that class; stories that would have gotten any Collegiate student several Middle School demerits at a time. At her middle school, she said, “students always had their phones out in class, and no one got in trouble. You could do whatever you wanted, and it didn’t matter.” 

Here at Collegiate, in both the Middle and Upper School, your phone must remain in your backpack and out of sight. In the Upper School, it may be confiscated and held from you in the clear plastic lock box in the front hall of Pitt Hall for the rest of the school day. If you fall victim to the lock box, each time you pass your phone, it taunts you, and you find yourself counting down the minutes until that subtle glow can illuminate your face once again. 

Edwards also recalled threats made against teachers during classes at Midlothian Middle. “People would speak so rudely to teachers. They would be like, ‘Don’t get close to me, or imma’ flick you’ and would sit with their hands ready to strike.” I couldn’t help but laugh. If a Collegiate student ever threatened a teacher, I imagine there would be significant consequences. According to Edwards, it was almost common for students at Midlothian Middle to jump out of the windows during classes, whereas at Collegiate it would be an extremely rare occurrence.

Upper School math teacher Jan Rodgers, who taught in public middle and high schools before becoming a teacher at Collegiate, has also had some eye-opening experiences. Rodgers explained, “my very first day, I stopped a 7th grader running in the hallway, and I caught his arm,” and he called her a name that wouldn’t even be heard in a PG-13 movie. During her time in public schools, she was spit on, threatened by a student with a knife, and disrespected in other ways. 

However, Rodgers shared that not all students she taught were like this. She said, “95% of the students wanted to learn and were engaged. The others made my job very tiring and wore me out.” For her, Collegiate has an environment that allows her to have better relationships with her students simply because the class sizes are drastically smaller. Since her school day is much less tiring, she also had more time to coach sports at Collegiate. 

Similarly to Rodgers, my time in public school wasn’t all negative. My experiences, though very different than those of many Collegiate students, helped me learn things about life outside of high school that I couldn’t have learned here. Some students didn’t have as much motivation as me; however, there were other students who pushed themselves and worked just as hard as students I have met at Collegiate.