Peck News Spring/Summer 2022: Horizons Widened

MIDDLE SCHOOL. Is there a phrase more fraught in the entire parental lexicon? Here is where adolescence raises its hormonally-charged hands, declaring I AM HERE with every eye roll, slammed door, and baffling catchphrase.

Middle school is where kids begin to to dive headfirst into brand-new, and enormously complex, ideas and concepts.

It’s where they are pushing heretofore unrealized boundaries, figuring out their identities and where they fit in, all while dealing with their rapidly changing bodies and minds.

They are feeling their way at the very edges of the nest, simultaneously wondering, are these wings supposed to get me from here to there?

Eighth graders in particular find themselves at a life stage where they are experiencing massive brain growth with the greatest potential of all the teen years to assimilate and master information. They’re leaping forward in problem solving, abstract thinking, deductive reasoning, strategic planning, and impulse control. Their frontal lobe—the seat of higher reasoning—is growing and interconnecting. Yet, for the next 12 to 18 years until the frontal lobe reaches full maturity, they’re still lured towards risky acts courtesy of that pesky emotional brain center, the limbic system. (1)

Neurologist Frances Jensen, neurology department chair at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Teenage Brain, describes teen thinking as, “paradoxical… these are people with very sharp brains, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them.” (2)

So, what’s a parent of a middle schooler to do? The answer: find people who know how to harness all of the power and potential of adolescence, and leverage it to nurture a strong sense of agency, self-reflection, and leadership.

As a K-8 school, Peck is uniquely poised to shepherd kids through their adolescent years, and to not only produce the best outcomes, but also, and perhaps more importantly, help students begin to find their best selves as they imagine what their futures could hold.

“I love the sense of discovery and growing self-awareness that develop during these critical years,” said Upper School Head Sadie Albertyn. “Middle school is something to be celebrated, not endured, and we know the K-8 structure gets this right. We’re able to focus on childhood, while still providing authentic leadership opportunities. We believe in the power of student choice, and we put students on the path to explore who they are before they choose a high school. I see the benefits of this every day as our students walk our hallways with their shoulders back and minds open.”

At Peck, posessing an elevated level of self-assuredness while heading into high school is no accident. Take the Class of 2022 for example, whose academic and social experiences during eighth grade were specifically designed to help each find new horizons within themselves.

Capstone Lab (the equivalent of a seniorlevel capstone project in high school) asks eighth graders to independently bring to life something that excites them. Celia Hepp ’22 translated her love of reading into a partnership with the NJ non-profit Bridge of Books, collecting and donating 2,600 books that would be distributed to a number of locations and programs, including an ESL program at Fort Dix (NJ) for Afghanistan refugees.

Eighth-grade speeches prompt students to not only devise and articulate a compelling, self-reflective narrative, but to also practice vulnerability by sharing a personal story in front of their peers and teachers. Lucky Valdivieso ’22 stepped up to the mic during an all-school assembly and delivered a powerful reflection on gratitude.

Structured leadership opportunities prompt students to realize the responsibilities that come with the privileges of their eighth-grade year at Peck. Lexi Schnur ’22 served as one of 10 editors to the school’s yearbook, The Linden. While a fun opportunity to practice storytelling and page design, students are ultimately responsible for producing a more than 200-page printed history of the school year.

Aside from curriculum, eighth graders get real-world practice being a role model simply by virtue of being the oldest kids in the school. “You get to feel what it’s like to have other kids admire you. And so when you fall short, it matters. And when you rise to it, it really matters,” said Eighth-Grade Lead Teacher Virginia Savage ’05.

“If you’re in a school with older kids, I think it’s easier to get lost in the shuffle in that your day-to-day actions aren’t always witnessed by younger peers. And I think this teaches character in an implicit, and very real, way.”

Christine Williams, who directs Peck’s secondary school counseling program, adds that “this is a time of life where kids start to become their authentic selves, and then you can really figure out what is the next best step [for secondary school. I love the way our kids get to be the big kids in seventh and eighth grade, and that’s what gives them so much independence and sense of self.”

How Peck’s Secondary School Process Widens Horizons

Along with the academic agency, leadership, and character development happening in the eighth-grade year comes a milestone unique to students in K-8schools: learning how to be a stakeholder in one’s own educational journey.

The opportunity for choice and agency in this kind of decision is a rare gift, and one that typically comes during a junior or senior high school year. But at the tender age of 14? How powerful is it at this age to literally put into practice the idea that you can strive to go anywhere, and be anything?

Throughout their journey at Peck, students have learned how to develop their own perspectives and to share their ideas with adults. How to advocate for themselves. How to handle choice when selecting a school can be so visible to the rest of their community. How to assess themselves. How to show up and stand tall in a professional environment.

How to imagine for themselves, “what else can I do?”

“I think the process that we give them in classes, specifically starting in seventh grade where they learn to, for example, share their perspectives in Harkness discussions, instills in them a broader sense of what they can do in the world,” said Williams. “They discover they have a voice, and they aren’t looking for anybody to make choices for them.”

Though the secondary school process is pragmatic, involving hefty interview prep, testing practice, essay-writing guidance, and more, it also provides a significant uplift to the kind of soft skills needed for independence and future leadership. Students practice self-assessment, taking risks, and managing expectations and disappointments.

Of course, they’re not completely on their own, as family partnership is integral for success. Williams works just as closely with families as a unit as she does with individual students. This structure provides eighth graders with a safe space to take risks and grow into this new, wider version of themselves; one who can both evaluate and answer one of life’s most important questions: Do I feel like I can belong here?

With such new questions, challenges, and opportunities taking hold during adolescence, it’s an enormous benefit for middle schoolers to be assured they can fall into a safety net if they stumble. At Peck, our middle school kids know that they have an entire team of advocates behind them who know them, care about them, and will push them to both be and become their own best outcomes.

As the adage goes, “it takes a village,” and Peck’s K-8 model is no exception. With a cadre of experts in childhood and adolescence, our students can spread their wings and fly further than they ever thought before.

(1), (2) Pellissier, “Inside the eighth grader’s brain,” greatschools.org