Junior High Graduation Quotes

God is like junior high, Brandon. Graduate already.

Imagine if we taught baseball the way that we teach science,” says UC Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik. “We would tell kids about baseball in the first couple of years. By the time they got to be in junior high, maybe we’d give them a drill where they could throw the ball to second base, over and over and over again. In college, they’d get to reproduce great, famous baseball plays, and then they’d never actually get to play the game until they were in graduate school.” High-quality project-based learning is, essentially, playing ball. There

I’m not sure what you want, Piper. Do you want me to send money? Would that help?” Curtiss asked. “He’s not like an abandoned pet, Curtiss. God! He’s your father and you could come up and help me out. That would be helpful.” I was angry with him. I felt like once again he had walked away from me and left me at a critical time. When I was a junior in high school, Curtiss went away to college and left me alone to navigate life with my father, and for those two years I held a vicious grudge. Curtiss left me alone to battle my father’s moods, alone to absorb Curtiss’s portion of his criticisms, alone to protect my mother from his cruel tone and even crueler periods of silence. Curtiss visited home rarely, but when he did I made sure that he could feel my wrath underneath my layers of friendly conversation. Finally, when he returned for my own high school graduation, he addressed my years of quiet fury. “Piper, you just don’t know how it is. It’s not like this in other families. It’s different when you get out into the world.

Rather, part of the argument is that with so much graduate unemployment, juvenile delinquency and high-school absenteeism, there could be practical alternatives to what we have now. A case could be made for a return to apprenticeships in trades such as car mechanics. Another would be to rearrange our priorities during workplace hiring. Less dependency might be placed on easily-achieved academic certificates - and more public recognition be given to hard-won experience. Other possibilities include early entry into the armed forces or police - via military finishing schools or junior police academies, instead of book-obsessed senior high schools and colleges of the woolly-minded humanities. But, for sure, a campaign of objections to this broader model would be publicly raised by the very groups who stand to lose financially from the decrease in municipal funding. That is, well-heeled academics and comfortably-off teaching unions.

He sometimes thought that the real thing that distinguished him and Malcolm from Jude and Willem was not race or wealth, but Jude’s and Willem’s depthless capacity for wonderment: their childhoods had been so paltry, so gray, compared to his, that it seemed they were constantly being dazzled as adults. The June after they graduated, the Irvines had gotten them all tickets to Paris, where, it emerged, they had an apartment—“a tiny apartment,” Malcolm had clarified, defensively—in the seventh. He had been to Paris with his mother in junior high, and again with his class in high school, and between his sophomore and junior years of college, but it wasn’t until he had seen Jude’s and Willem’s faces that he was able to most vividly realize not just the beauty of the city but its promise of enchantments. He envied this in them, this ability they had (though he realized that in Jude’s case at least, it was a reward for a long and punitive childhood) to still be awestruck, the faith they maintained that life, adulthood, would keep presenting them with astonishing experiences, that their marvelous years were not behind them. He remembered too watching them try uni for the first time, and their reactions—like they were Helen Keller and were just comprehending that that cool splash on their hands had a name, and that they could know it—made him both impatient and intensely envious. What must it feel like to be an adult and still discovering the world’s pleasures?

45. Remember that advanced placement doesn’t necessarily have to mean early graduation. Our two older children were talented in math and science, and easily completed more than the required number of secondary credits in sciences and humanities well before their peers. We drove our oldest son two hours away to live in a dorm at a state university the week before his 18th birthday, and our second-born graduated from high school when she was 15. Her college adviser mapped a plan where she could have finished her PhD in nursing by the time she was 21! Academically, they were fine. But socially and emotionally, it was tough to transition to the rigors of full-time college life (even junior college) one or two years before their traditionally-schooled friends. Because of that, their younger brother, a scholar in his own right, was not given the option to graduate early. Although he was frustrated with this limitation, it has alleviated a lot of pressure the other kids were forced to deal with before they had reached appropriate emotional maturity.

...I began planning all my work this way, beginning with a concrete student objective (e.g., to write a haiku) and a detailed analysis of the task involved, including the necessary knowledge of the form, knowledge of the kinds of content, and the procedures involved in actually producing one. I began to plan in terms of the prerequisite knowledge for a task and to delay teaching until that was in place. I began inventing activities that would make initial approaches to learning tasks simpler (e.g., providing the first line of the poem) and sequencing learning activities from easy to difficult. Underneath all this planning lay the concept of inquiry...That is, I worked to set up lessons so that the students could derive and test rules, generalizations, and interpretations for themselves. Most important, I learned that what and how much students learned was dependent on my planning and my care in bringing those plans to fruition in the classroom. I would never be able to view teaching as a hit-or-miss operation again, one that was subject to the vagaries of the weather, students' moods, and other random factors out of my control. I learned that if students did not learn, on any given day, I should look for the cause in my assumptions about the learning tasks, my planning, my teaching, or all three. I suddenly was more excited about teaching English to junior high students than about my graduate work. As I look back on it now, what I had considered a disgraceful demotion was one of the most important events in my life.

Whether in skirt-chasing or basketball, Mason always craved a win. Perhaps too much. Mason had recently retired from the NBA when his second son, Antoine, graduated from junior high. After the commencement ceremony, Antoine challenged his old man to a one-on-one game to 11 points. Antoine made up for his height disadvantage by hitting several jumpers from outside to start, taking a 5–0 lead. Then Anthony buckled down, came back, and took a 10–9 edge. Antoine got past his father with a crossover dribble and raced in for a layup that would have tied the score. But just before he could finish the play, the elder Mason—at least seven inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than Antoine—flew into the frame and clotheslined his adolescent son in the throat. “As I’m laying on the ground, holding my throat and coughing, he grabs the ball, lays it in, and says, ‘Game.’ And then walks in the house,” he says. Other family members, there to celebrate Antoine’s graduation, looked on in stunned horror. It simply wasn’t in Anthony Mason’s nature to let anyone walk away with a win at his expense.

If it’s a girl,” she continued, “let’s not allow her too much education.” “I agree,” Matsuda answered. “Too much schooling is no good anyway.” “Of course, we’ll have to send her for the compulsory years.” “No, they’re the worst. Let’s hire tutors.” “Far too expensive. I’ll never agree to that,” Fumiko replied. “No, she can just go to the local school. When she graduates from junior high, I’ll keep her at home and treat her like a maid. By this time of the morning, she’ll be up cooking our breakfast. I’ll be lying in bed like this, taking it easy with you.” “That sounds nice.” “So it appeals to you. In that case, I’ll make her cook breakfast when she’s in grammar school.” “Will a first-grader be able to cook?” “She won’t have any choice. And she’d better get the rice just right.” “The poor little thing!” “But it’s best to be strict with girls — better for them.” “True.” “I’m not going to have a girl who thinks too much. Let’s raise her so she’ll never talk back. I don’t mean just so she can restrain herself — I want her incapable of talking back — a girl who has no opinions of her own. A girl who does what she’s told, automatically, like an idiot. Even her face must be an idiot’s face.” “A girl like a doll.” “Yes. When she’s small, I’ll train her to serve other people, like a good little wife — like the girls in ancient China. As soon as she gets out of school, I’ll marry her off.” “I’ll go and visit her. I’ll take her some of that sugar we got as a present, behind your back.” “Will you indeed.” “But you never use it to cook with. There’s too much, anyway.” “How do you know?” “You told me.” “Did I? Well, take it, then.” “I’ll go and see her every Sunday.” “Her husband won’t like that.” “That’s all right. He’ll understand. I’ll find her a kind husband.” “He won’t stay that way. I’ll encourage him to be cruel and mean. You must encourage him, too — to have affairs and drink. If you meet any beautiful women, you mustn’t keep them for yourself. Send them over, lots of them, to him, just like the sugar. She won’t get any sympathy when she comes over to complain. I’ll show her my body. ‘Look!’ I’ll tell her: ‘Look at what your father does to me. I can bear it, and so should you!

With this in mind, I’d started a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, inviting twenty sophomore and junior girls from high schools around Greater D.C. to join us for monthly get-togethers that included informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like financial literacy and choosing a career. We kept the program largely behind closed doors, rather than thrusting these girls into the media fray. We paired each teen with a female mentor who would foster a personal relationship with her, sharing her resources and her life story. Valerie was a mentor. Cris Comerford, the White House’s first female executive chef, was a mentor. Jill Biden was, too, as were a number of senior women from both the East and the West Wing staffs. The students were nominated by their principals or guidance counselors and would stay with us until they graduated. We had girls from military families, girls from immigrant families, a teen mom, a girl who’d lived in a homeless shelter. They were smart, curious young women, all of them. No different from me. No different from my daughters. I watched over time as the girls formed friendships, finding a rapport with one another and with the adults around them. I spent hours talking with them in a big circle, munching popcorn and trading our thoughts about college applications, body image, and boys. No topic was off-limits. We ended up laughing a lot. More than anything, I hoped this was what they’d carry forward into the future—the ease, the sense of community, the encouragement to speak and be heard. My wish for them was the same one I had for Sasha and Malia—that in learning to feel comfortable at the White House, they’d go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, sitting at any table, raising their voices inside any group.