Dear Middle School Families,
As we hit the half year mark in year 2 of a district middle school, we pause to reflect.
Middle school can be a challenging environment to navigate and adolescence is a unique time in life. If you pause to reflect on your own experiences in grade seven and eight or even the broader definition of middle level, grades 5-9; you may remember some challenges with friendships, angst with your family, experimenting with your tastes in music, clothing, hairstyles and overall efforts to figure out who you were and what your place in the world was.
Adolescence is a time in which it is typical to test the boundaries, push the limits, experiment with new behaviors, social groups and personality traits. Humans ‘in the middle’ are striving to understand who they are, their place in the world, how they fit, why they matter and what they value. It is a time in which they want to exert their independence but still very much need the support of the adults in their lives. It is a time in life when they need a combination of support and limits. They are still working to internalize healthy, effective habits and coping skills. They are experimenting with humor and sarcasm, and trying to understand all of this in a world that does not always provide the best examples. Additionally, our adolescents are moving through this stage of life with the additional complications of the Internet, social media and the constant presence of various electronic devices. The Internet exposes them to a tremendous amount of information, often unfiltered, sometimes inaccurate, and at times, unhealthy. While we strive to provide protections and filters during the school day, taking steps to limit their exposure on their personal devices outside of school can be tremendously hard for even the most attentive parent. Social media has provided avenues for people to be, directly or anonymously, unkind in ways that are difficult, almost impossible, to monitor and manage when students are on personal devices or public wifi outside of school.
We serve 200+ Middle School families and there are different parenting styles and approaches. For every parent that reaches out wanting their child to bring home their Chromebook, we have a parent that reaches out wanting their child to not bring their chromebook home. For every parent that reaches out wanting a stricter consequence for their child’s behavior (“like the old days”), there is one that reaches out wanting less of a consequence for their child. For every parent that reaches out to express gratitude about a system we have in place there is one that reaches out to express their frustration about a system we have in place.
Becoming a unified middle school staff equipped with shared knowledge and the skills necessary to be able to implement best practices for 200+ humans navigating a very challenging time in life takes reflection, thoughtfulness, teamwork and persistence. We continue to strive to be better and to do better by our students and families. As we take these moments to reflect and learn, we are working to develop a plan for what can change now, what needs to change later and how to implement changes thoughtfully in a way that includes families as partners in the process.
We want to express our gratitude and our thanks to those families who reach out respectfully, ask questions to seek understanding, speak to us directly about their concerns and work with us to identify challenges and generate solutions. The more we, as adults, are able to model teamwork and positive, healthy ways to express differences and come together for realistic and thoughtful solutions, the more success our children will experience in and out of school. While we will provide a survey later in the year to collect feedback, we welcome emails and phone calls for pressing concerns.
As we head into the holiday season, our wish for you is a restful time, a time to recharge, to relax and to be surrounded by loved ones. We look forward to returning in 2024 and moving forward in the very hard work to provide our adolescents the most positive experience we can build here at Fair Haven Union Middle School. We thank you for your support, patience and feedback.
Sincerely,
Jennefer Paquette
FHUMS Principal
jpaquette@svuvt.org
802-265-4966, ext 2503
