Junior High Drama

My wife is in the middle of her first few weeks as the new assistant principal at East Junior High School. This is her first administrative position after two decades as a classroom teacher and literacy coach in the West Memphis School District.

She’s very much enjoying the role. She did, however, admit that she was going to have to readjust her mindset in dealing with junior high students after more than a decade in a high school environment.

There’s just something about that age group — somewhere in between childhood and adulthood and life pulling them in both directions — that makes the junior high student a special kind of person.

She told me a story the other day about two girls getting ready to fight…

over a pencil. I won’t bother you with the details, but she was able to prevent things from escalating by getting them to talk things out, something neither of the girls was very experienced with, it turns out.

But as she was telling me this story, we got to discussing the junior high mentality. Half of them are still acting like kids, playing Pokemon and watching cartoons, while the other half are making out and smoking cigarettes behind the shed. The main problem is that they have all these feelings and can’t express them maturely.

And then it hit me… that’s where we are in America. Thanks to everyone’s Offend-O-Meter being cranked up to 11 but also being unwilling to stop and talk things out, we’re living in a nation of junior high kids.

And everyone from the White House to the Outhouse is ready to fight about it.

Ralph Hardin is Editor of the Evening Times. He lives in Marion with his wife and kids, a terrible dog and a bunch of cats.