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Depending on where we started schooling, most of us move up a year in the fall with hopes to achieve success. For some of us, that also means moving into a brand new school. That means a new environment, new faces, and more expectations and rules to learn. The transition from middle school to high school is often the biggest and most challenging. Incoming middle school students transitioning into high school for their first year face a lot of pressure.
Sometimes, transitioning into high school is fairly easy because the expectations are set low from friends currently in or graduated from high school. WHS senior Alex Yu states, “You can figure it out throughout the freshman year. It wasn’t super hard because I knew people who were in highschool.” Knowing people in high school well before you enter can give you a lot of information on what to expect. If you have younger siblings, tell them about how high school is compared to middle school and how to prepare for the upcoming years.
Middle schoolers need to be ready for the big environmental change when entering high school. The campus will be bigger: it won’t just be one middle school, but rather multiple local schools, and it will be a much larger student and staff body. Still, even Washington High School is small compared with some other high schools. Senior Josh Navarro says, “The environment in my former high school, in Texas, is about 6 times bigger than Washington. I think it’s because of the large buildings and it is also an indoor school. Washington was so new to me because it’s more open and a lot smaller.” Not only should middle schoolers be ready for change, but also international students, and people from different states and school districts. Fortunately, there are counselors and staff that help students transition into high school. They can provide translators, counseling, and more to help new students fully immerse themselves in their new school. In an interview with Washington’s new Transition Counselor Brandon Green, he says, “Students should utilize their assets, flextime period, asking questions, and collaborating with other students. The students’ fears are mainly about the amount of homework that will be given by teachers, a way bigger school to navigate, and making new friends.” Students will face these fears, leading to a build up of stress, anxiety, and exhaustion. Interviewee Josh Navarro says, “The scariest part of entering high school, in my view, was the amount of work being given out to us as students. Now that I’m in high school, I feel like my work has doubled because I have a job plus school.” As Green says, it is important that students learn to collaborate with one another to de-stress and use the assets provided by the school district such as flextime, a 32 minute period that is given to the students for the opportunity to catch up on the work they need to finish or study.
Nathan Vinoray is a Senior at Washington High School. He was born and raised in Fremont, California. It’s his first year on WHS Hatchet. He hopes to bring out some new topics to Hatchet. He enjoys doing a lot of things in his free time, like 3D modeling, creating personal films, and hanging out with friends and family. Nathan plans to join the Army within the next year or two while trying to major in Engineering and hopes to leave the US and live in Europe for some time.