Gentle Transition : In Lauded Program, 6th-Graders Opt to Be Small Fry or BMOC

THOUSAND OAKS —  Big 11-year-old on campus or the littlest one in the lunch line. More time to play and more personal attention versus a more rigorous curriculum and bigger bullies.

Staying in the nurturing nest of elementary or entering the unknown world of middle school--it’s a tough choice for a sixth-grader. At the same time, it’s one students and parents are eager to make.

In the name of freedom of choice, Conejo Valley schools started offering both options to a limited number of students through the Middle School Program at Colina and Los Cerritos schools.

With routine waiting lists and test scores worth bragging about, the 2-year-old program is almost universally praised by parents, teachers, students and administrators.

Hoping to meet the middle school demand while preserving the sanctity of the neighborhood elementary school, trustees have decided to expand the voluntary program to the district’s two other intermediate schools: Redwood and Sequoia. At the four campuses, a total of 576 sixth-graders will be able to participate in the program next fall--twice the program’s current enrollment.

The expansion of the Middle School Program seems only logical to Susan Witting, president of the Parent Teacher Student Assn. at Los Cerritos.

“I don’t think anyone can argue with giving a parents a choice,” said Witting, whose daughter Kaitlin, 11, was among Los Cerritos’ first sixth-graders last year.

Certainly, it’s not unique for school districts to protect sixth-graders by keeping them in elementary school. Nor is it unusual for school district brass to bump the youngsters into middle school, where the academic standards are often higher for sixth-graders.

What is rare about the Conejo Valley plan, as Witting points out, is that families can choose to get the same sixth-grade curriculum in the elementary or middle school setting. No other school district in the county offers that choice.

The people who know the program best, sixth-graders and their parents, are keen on choice. They say elementary and middle schools have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Protected Learning

In Scott Johnson’s science class at Colina Middle School, clusters of sixth-graders are building bridges from toothpicks and glue. The wooden spans will later be judged on their strength and craftsmanship.

The students work independently and diligently in groups of three and four. During the lesson, the nattily clad sixth-graders all behave. There’s no running, no disruptions and no acting out.

Student Andrew Young, his glasses sliding down his nose as he works, can sum up the reason for the good conduct in one word.

“Maturity,” he pronounces. “You have to be a pretty mature sixth-grader to come here, because it’s like middle school.”

It’s middle school, but with a few important differences, said Colina sixth-grade teacher Carol Philips. The Middle School Program is designed as a gentle segue from the structured, one-teacher-a-day elementary atmosphere to the less rigid, one-teacher-per-subject world of middle school.

To keep sixth-graders from being overwhelmed or from growing up too fast, she said, the younger students have a different program from older students. They have their own four-room cluster of classrooms, their lockers are in a special place and they don’t take classes with the older kids.

In fact, Colina’s 144 sixth-graders--and their four teachers--have a different daily schedule from the rest of the school. In the morning, students stay with the same teacher for two periods of core classes--either math and science or English and language arts. After a 10-minute snack break, the youngsters take a 45-minute elective class--public speaking, beginning band or computers.

After scurrying to their lockers, the sixth-graders then head to physical education. To avoid awkward locker room moments, older students and sixth-graders don’t take gym at the same time. The youngest students also get 10 minutes of lead time in the lunch line, where they are most likely to be picked on, before returning to another 95 minutes of core classes.

Even after-school programs are tailored to the needs of younger students, Philips said. Instead of school dances--and the pressures they entail--the school holds sixth-grade ice cream socials some Friday afternoons. “There are no couples dances,” she said. “Just games and doing the ‘YMCA.’ So they’re beginning to learn how to interact” with each other in a safe environment.

The sixth-graders in Johnson’s class say they like the novelty, variety and academics of middle school.

Middle school “is harder and more challenging,” said Aubrey Elson, 10. “But it’s still fun. Even though it’s not really junior high, it gets you ready for junior high.”

There are other advantages too, said Aubrey’s friend, Bedina Ary, 11. “If you don’t get along with one teacher, you get to change classes,” she joked.

At middle school for less than a month, the sixth-graders said they have acclimated well: They know their gym locker combinations, they can keep track of their homework assignments in a school-provided day planner and no one really picks on them. But most said they are well aware of being physically smaller than the seventh- and eighth-graders.

“Sometimes I feel tiny if there are big kids around me,” said Matt Hook, 11. “But when my friends are around me, I don’t care.”

Big Fish, Small Pond

It’s a different situation at Conejo Elementary School, where the sixth-graders tower over most of the pint-sized populace. Walking outside for a science lesson on magnets, the sixth-graders practically strut around campus.

Scooping dirt into a paper cup, and placing a round magnet under the cup, the Conejo sixth-graders gleefully separate iron particles from sand with the magnet and explain why elementary school was the best choice for them.

Boisterous and giggly, the 30 youngsters playing and learning in the dirt sometimes have to be reminded to stay on task. Not self-conscious, they are unconcerned with fashion, chatty with their teacher and knowledgeable about their campus.

Sixth-graders at Conejo “kind of rule the school,” said Holland Thompson, 11. Yet those in middle school are the babies of the campus.

“It sounds weird, but it feels kind of like my second home here because I have friends and people who know me here,” Holland said. As the oldest kids, “you get to set an example. It’s sort of like being president. If [younger students] have questions, you can help them.”

Staying in the neighborhood elementary school also helps sixth-graders--who are susceptible to peer pressure and not quite ready to make their own decisions--stay childlike, said Linda del Dosso, a Thousand Oaks mother of three.

Based on her experiences with her daughter Marisa, now in college, Del Dosso said the conflicting pressures of middle school are many. Middle schools are sensitive to clothing fads and the lures of smoking and dating. All the while, “you still like playing with Barbies,” she said.

While receptive to school choice, Del Dosso said she favors elementary school for the 11-year-old students. “It’s a lot more structured at elementary school,” Del Dosso said. “There’s a lot more security because everyone is watching out for you.”

She pauses. “I just think that they’re still so young in sixth grade. They’re so small.”

Even more so than at a middle school, parental involvement is stressed at elementary schools, said Conejo sixth-grade teacher Alan Aldrich.

With the same teacher all day, students get more individual attention too, he said. If they’re not doing their homework, their teacher knows it. If they’re having trouble at home, the teacher senses that, too.

In elementary school, if a parent wants to know how her child is doing, she talks to “one teacher with one class” of 30 students, he said. “That [middle school] teacher who sees 200 kids a day might not know that one kid as well as I will.”

That’s all true, agreed Conejo sixth-grader Troy Mooser, 11. But his choice to stay in elementary school was based on a less tangible factor. “I just like it here,” he said, paper cup full of dirt in hand. “I’ve got my friends here.”

A Matter of Choice

That’s as good a reason as any, according to Ventura County Schools Supt. Charles Weis.

Just as all children don’t lose their teeth at the same time or grow at the same rate, they don’t all mature by age 11, he said. With good teachers and a desire to learn, a sixth-grader can get a good education in either setting, if they are allowed to remain children.

As for the choice between middle and elementary school, he said there is no right answer. “Kids are different,” Weis said. “They’re not all the same.”