A Remedy For Neglected Minds
Introduction
It’s Monday, the beginning of the school week. August Spies sits down in his sophomore history class and prepares to listen to today’s lecture. At some point during the day, he flls out a math worksheet. His chemistry class involves a lab. In his English class, he’s instructed on close reading techniques, or something like that. The bell rings, and August waves goodbye to his teacher. On his way out, he looks at the calendar. It’s Friday, and August wonders where the time has gone. Since his frst day of high school, August has experienced a personal Groundhog Day; the routine of going to class, waiting for the bell to ring, and taking care of his homework in the evening is his modus operandi. August doesn’t know when this cycle began or when it will end, and the monotony is getting to him. In and out, in and out; with every passing day, August felt as if he was trapped in a world awash with gray, holding on dearly to whatever color he had left. For him to continue, something needed to change.
In a 2020 study conducted by the Yale Child Study Center on 21,678 high school students, 80% of all participants reported to attribute negative emotions– such as stress and boredom– to school. Additionally, of the group that reported a positive attribution, researchers found that their descriptions of their positive emotions were often vague. There is growing discontent amongst high school students with the quality of their education and their school environment. This comes as a result of years and years of federal budget cuts to public education all across America. As such, the American public school system currently exists in a state of limbo, caught halfway between falling apart and barely functioning. However, amongst community colleges, a new program is making its foray into the world of education, ofering an alternative learning environment for those, like August, who feel underserved by their traditional high school environment. This program goes by many names– pre-college,
early college, dual enrollment; in August’s case, it is Middle College. These programs give middle school and high school students the opportunity to experience a curriculum that is tailored to their interests and needs, as opposed to a standardized set of subjects and schedules. It also ofers students of the program a pathway to continue their education at said community college after they fnish. Like many others, August’s academic journey is a testament to both the failures of the traditional school system and successes of pre-college programs.
How It Fell Apart
August’s downhill relationship with school began some time during his sophomore year. He, like many others during the 2021-22 school year, was returning to in-person school after the end of the COVID lockdown. However, unlike many, August didn’t exactly fnd himself happy to be back. He described his then-daily routine as “superfcial,” lacking engagement and interpersonal connections. He laments the separation he felt from others. He struggled socially at school, citing the hecticness of having 7 or more classes in which there narrow windows of time to spend with his peers; once their interactions were over, there was no incentive to continue connecting with them. Additionally, the material he was presented with in his classes felt lackluster and unchallenging– often resulting in him waiting for the bell to ring– driving him to feel as if he was trapped in a daily cycle of going to school, completing arbitrary assignments, then going home and doing homework before repeating it all over again.
“It’s a system designed to reward people for dulling themselves,”
he describes. Neglected and let down by the school, August quickly fell into anguish
and found himself in and out of local psych wards– which, for August, only exacerbated the conditions he already was at odds with in school. “At the frst place I was staying at, they had this open air area. Maybe once or twice a week you could go there and it was the only place in the entire facility that was outside. I remember it was just a square vista, straight up, and it didn’t even look like it was outside. There wasn’t anything living inside of it and it was like you were in a cubicle. I keep that with me because I remember spending so much time just looking up, and then… I don’t know. It was a strange experience and that seemed to kind of encapsulate a lot of what school was to me– cold, lonely, and distant.”
The Big Switch
It’s January, 2023. The clock is ticking– August is running out of time to fnd a remedy for his struggles in school. Stressed and anxious, August knows he has, at maximum, another year left in him before he loses his drive completely. Enter the deus ex machina of August’s story– Middle College. During an info session at Mountain View High School with Middle College’s coordinators, August found himself infatuated with the program’s prospects. Here was the
solution to his frustrations, laid out in front of him in a complete package deal. Although he was originally unsure of whether or not he wanted to join the program– he’d have to bear the burden of a lot more responsibility in regards to his education– he eventually spoke to his parents and signed up for an interview with the Middle College faculty. “As a kid who was decidedly running out of options,” August explains, “I was like, ‘yeah, sure, I’m gonna bite the bullet.” At the start of the 2023-2024 school year, August fully made the transition to Middle College. Initially, he found it difcult to acclimate to the new space he found himself in. The coursework was harder, time management and schedule building was a necessity, and the unfamiliar classroom environments all contributed to that feeling of anxiousness he felt. However, August believes that those initial few challenges were just a small hurdle to get over in what would ultimately be a liberating experience for him. “For those frst couple of weeks, I was paralyzed by choice,” he said, “but that choice was freeing.”
For The Future
August now is on the cusp of completing his second and fnal year at Middle College, and is as frm in his confdence about the
switch as he was the frst time he stepped foot onto the Foothill campus. To him, Middle College was his ‘Mecca’ of sorts– a place where he made peace with education and found the interpersonal closeness he craved. August believes that, thanks to the small class size and discussion-based class style, he has felt much more inclined to get to know the people around him, “The frst week I met Mars and Eli, who are two of my best friends, even though they’re a grade above me.” He also appreciates the style of teaching Middle College ofers, citing his two teachers Mike and Sophie as, “moreso personalities than teachers who are very much your friends.” In general, he feels more in tune with his class environment than he did at Mountain View– describing his classes as “more human than standard school practices” and their project-based curriculum as “actually doing work under meaningful circumstances.” Additionally, learning at Middle College has reshaped August’s perspective on community colleges; he feels confdent that he’ll continue to take classes at Foothill before transferring with a full scholarship to a UC sometime in the near future. He explained, “When you think of community college, it’s not a fattering thing, is it? It’s like it’s usually like, ‘Oh, you’re going to get stabbed in a toilet’ or something and a lot of that is just not true. There’s probably schools somewhere where it’s like that, but it’s a lot rarer than anyone would like to believe. And I don’t know. It makes me a lot happier to know that the colleges which are available to most people, which work for people who aren’t as lucky as I am, are still very good and are sometimes even better than UCs.”
While August is immensely grateful for the opportunity he had to turn his educational life around, he argues that there are many more students like him who are also underserved by a traditional high school environment, yet aren’t aware of or lack access to a program like Middle College. Indeed, it is estimated that in the entire state of California, less than 100 of these
programs are operating at community colleges; of the ones that are operating, due to their unique nature as highly variable alternative learning programs, the state Board of Education fnds it difcult to adequately fund them. Thus, it is generally left to the boards of local school districts and their administrators to oversee the creation and implementation of middle college programs which, much like the standard public school system, leads to large amounts of inequity in the availability and quality of these programs between wealthy and less wealthy districts. However, August frmly believes that through advocacy for educational reform, supporting local community colleges, and raising awareness about alternative education, programs like Middle College could become more commonplace. “I think there needs to be large, sweeping changes more focused on growth rather than performance. I think ultimately that these programs should be available to everyone because there is always going to be someone who is incapable of ftting within the slim margins of what the current education system wants for us,” he explains, “I think no matter how monolithic these things seem,
It is always worth it to keep pushing for some change, even if you know it might be hopeless.
If you know anyone who would beneft from Middle College, I would say tell them, give it a shot. Maybe if you think you could beneft from Middle College, you should give it a shot. If you know people who can’t really get anything out of both, then you should work to change the systems yourself. And it’s diffcult, but telling people about these issues and being aware helps.”
About the Author
Stella Cedar is a junior at Mountain View High School and an animation student at Freestyle Academy. They enjoy listening to and composing music in their free time, and they currently aspire to be a producer or sound tech. When not making music, Stella can be found binging YouTube documentaries ad nauseum or enjoying a variety of video games.