“Bermuda Triangles,” most middle schools are, according to a recent educational report. But though they are commonly the place where early adolescents are lost,” feeling unsafe, socially isolated, and academically unchallenged, they don’t have to be that way! A buzz is growing in the educational media regarding an alternative to traditional middle school (grades 6-8) education. Two articles in just the past few weeks have sounded strong calls telling us to reconsider the conventional wisdom that middle schools should be organized as their own, individual institutions, as most of the local public schools do here in the East Bay. Interestingly, the buzz that these articles are making seems to be reflected in a local trend right here at Saklan: we are experiencing a doubling of interest in our middle school as compared to the average of the past four years.

One article’s headline, appearing in the March 17th edition of Education Week, sends a strong message: “Report Questions Wisdom of Separate Middle Schools.” The RAND report under consideration makes some half a dozen recommendations, but the one that is “getting all the attention is the call to reconsider stand-alone middle school.” It “questions whether students teetering at the brink of adolescence should be in separate schools at all during such a critical time.”

To quote the report’s author, “It turns out the onset of puberty is really a bad reason to try to move kids to another structure and to another school altogether. Middle Schools became the norm because of social and demographic reasons, not so much because of any empirical basis for their existence.” These are tough environments, where kids are taken from a safe, familiar, small and comfortable place and thrown into a new “jungle” just when their bodies and hormones are changing the most, just when their social pressures are most competitive, and just when intellectual challenges such as Algebra and expository writing are most daunting.

Schools across the country are now implementing this new thinking. The Baltimore Sun last week published an article entitled “Baltimore Embraces K-8 Schools.” Calling it part of a “quiet movement” happening throughout the US, the paper tells of how that city has gone from eight to thirty such schools. One official reports “This makes all the sense in the world for all families. If I had my way, I’d tear down every elementary and middle school in the city and rebuild them along the K-8 model.” The Philadelphia schools chief goes so far as to say about the shift to K-8 schools: “To not do so is the equivalent of educational malpractice.”

Although much of the logic for combined K-8 schools derives from the seeking of greater safety and security emotionally for students, recent research is finding substantial academic achievement results as well. The Philadelphia Education Fund has found that “K-8 eighth graders score higher than their counterparts at traditional middle schools.” Similarly, research in Baltimore found that “students in K-8 schools had significantly higher scores in reading, language arts, and mathematics than their counterparts in K-5 and 6-8 schools, were 20 percent more likely to pass the state’s standardized tests, and had slightly better attendance.”

Finally, these types of school also improve parent participation, something closely aligned with Saklan’s mission. To quote a K-8 principal in the article, “Normally, as kids move up in grade parental participation drops off. We’re finding that our elementary school parents are a good influence on our middle school parents. They tend to serve as role models and keep them involved in the school.”

This we believe at Saklan Valley School too. It is not inadvertent that we carry our program Pre-School through 8th grade. We do it because parents asked for it, demanded it even, when we were only a PS-5 school. We do it because our middle school students recognize themselves as leaders among the student body, and exercise that leadership with responsibility and maturity so as to best influence and care for the younger children. We do it because we know they will learn the most when they feel safe and secure in an environment where the teachers know them as individuals.

Long have we believed a K-8 environment was best for kids, but it is great to see this affirmation K-8 schools are better for students psychologically and academically, and that they are better at incorporating parent involvement in students’ lives.

Paul Nathan, Chair

Paul Felton, Vice Chair

Ed Rice

Betsy Hill

Marcela Salem

Ruth Bailey

Bett Tokar

Annie Barendregt

Jennifer Griessel

Dan Dahlen

Andy Firstenberg

Maureen Gibeson

Jonathan Martin, Head of School

Third Graders visit the past!

by Eileen Seeburger

On April 26 Saklan’s third graders left very early in the morning and traveled 2 ½ hours north past Sacramento and then east into the hills past the small town of Wheatland into tiny Sierra Town, an 1850’s pioneer town at the Old Sierra Historical Ranch. Our time there was filled with many experiences and one of our first was to change into pioneer clothing at Fort Smith where we then had cornbread, stew, and fresh bread cooked over a wood fire for lunch. Lunch tasted so very good after our hike from our large mechanical wagons (cars). We were beginning to feel like we had truly gone back in time!

For the next 30 hours we fed pigs, baby goats, chickens and guinea hens, sewed on buckskin, made rope, candles, clothespin dolls, beef jerky and butter. We met Snowmoon the Indian, listened to Badger Bob’s campfire stories and Indian flute, learned how to square dance, went to the town mercantile, read journals in the Old School House, went fishing with bamboo and sinew line (and caught fish!), and saw 19th century gun and rifle demonstrations put on by Badger Bob and Ol’ Coot, the mountain men.