‘Developing Mastery’ In High School

By KATHRYN FERNANDOPULLE ‘21

I came to Milton Academy as a new seventh grader. Since my arrival, I’ve noticed that the Milton Academy middle school is an entirely different world compared to the its high school. To start, the middle school does not give letter grades. At first, there was the “developing mastery” and “demonstrating mastery” rubric. Later on, the teachers decided to change the grading system to simply “proficient” and “not proficient.” Furthermore, the level of rigor and effort required in a middle school class is nowhere close to the level of a high school class. Despite all of the seminars and presentations that we had to sit through in eighth grade, I, along with most of my class, was not prepared for the high school transition.

After experiencing the transition from the middle school to the high school, I can affirmatively say that the jump is too far to make. The thing that really shocked me when I came to high school was the grades. The only feedback I had received for the past years was words like “developing mastery” or “proficient,” which meant almost nothing. Despite the intention of developing an eagerness to learn without the pressure of grades, not having physical letter grades made the students less motivated. Since there were only four categories that your ‘grade’ could be, the highest one would be equivalent to an A or B; therefore, students thought that B-level work was actually A-level work. As a result, when middle school kids cross the street to high school classes, they do not try as hard as they should. The first month of high school surprised me. I soon realized why my sisters had stayed up so late every night; getting an “A” takes much more work and dedication than getting a “proficient” in middle school.

Many of my peers from the middle school struggled at the beginning of freshman year. Keeping up with the work became increasingly difficult because we were trained for a much less rigorous curriculum. Furthermore, having almost five subjects of homework per night was a huge change. In eighth grade, I usually had only two or three subjects of homework that would take me no more than an hour in total. When freshman year came, I ended up spending an hour on each subject. During the first month of freshman year, I put about as much effort into my homework as I did in middle school because I thought that level of effort was normal. However, as soon as I started to get assignments back, I realized that I was going to have to do more work in order to get the results I wanted.

I remember one homework assignment from my freshmen Physics class was to “work on our lab reports for 45 minutes”. So I wrote and analyzed for 45 minutes and then stopped to do another subject of homework. When I got to class the next day, I realized that I had only completed 1/3 of the lab report, whereas most of my class had finished theirs. I asked my friend how she had finished it so fast and she said, “It took me like 3 hours. When a teacher says ‘spend 45 minutes’ they never mean it.” In that moment, I realized that my study habits had to change. Fulfilling the middle school requirements was not going to cut it anymore.

The Milton Academy middle school is an amazing school with great education. However, the high school and the middle school are so drastically different. With the different grading systems and the increase in effort, the leap from eighth grade to freshman year is massive. I think that eighth grade teachers should work to better prepare students for the next year. I have seen all the past middle school students grow over last year as they thrive at Milton, but I still wonder how the freshmen this year will handle the transition.